this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2026
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In a nutshell this is impossible because of how the global supply chain works. Specifically how most of the hardware engineers/factories are in Taiwan, and how the technology to make chips is proprietarily owned by a company in Norway.
Like the whole reason China wants Tiawan in the first place is the same reason they can't just bomb them into submission... Their population of highly skilled hardware engineers that fundamentally make the global chips supply chain possible is impossible to replace.
And China also can't really invade because all the facilities that make the silicon are rigged to self destruct if China puts boots on their soil, at least last I heard.
It's a lot of things. But complex tech can involve literally thousands of hardware engineers. Each with very specific skills.
The proximity of these highly skilled workers to cheap chinese labour is another reason why this is difficult to replicate elsewhere.
Would be brilliant
I mean, it would bring global tech to a standstill. It would be a significant problem. Once existing stuff broke, there would be no replacement. I know very little about chip manufacture, except that the lithography machines are fantastically complex and costly. It would probably take years to spin up new production.
This seems like a pretty solid mutually assured destruction deterrent and doesn't even involve nukes.
You have clearly and concisely explained the exact reason the US wouldn't and couldn't allow China to invade Taiwan (well, wouldn't under a rational administration).
From what I can find, it looks like ASML has a software brick they can just drop into the update stream. As cool as physical disabling would be, a remote software trigger is simpler and leaves the machines in tact to spin back up after aggression ends
AsmL is a dutch company...
Also ,i'm not sure if HBM requires the smallest nodes