this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Oh no! Anyways…
The globalization of the economy has been the single greatest contributor to world peace since the second world war.
People love to make this claim but it’s kind of impossible to prove. I could just as easily say that the Second World War itself resulted in a distaste for war, or that innovations in computers and electronics contributed to world peace. There’s just correlations, but it’s just kind of “vibes” - “oh they wouldn’t go to war because they rely on eachothers trade!” as if historically nations didn’t also have trade. Like, Venice was notoriously the trade hub of Europe in the Middle Ages and it still got invaded a whole bunch.
Venice didn't really have domestic technologies that everyone else relied on and that couldn't be easily replaced because it costs the GDP of a medium-sized country to even develop.
So what you’re talking about isn’t really globalism, but technological supremacy? Globalism is just about supply chains being spread across the globe. When I pointed out that nations connected with large supply chains still got invaded you moved the goalposts to be about technology.
The fact is that I don’t think there really is any domestic technology that everyone relies on which only has one source - high tech industries such as semiconductor electronics, aerospace engineering, biomedical engineering, etc. are researched, designed and manufactured all over the world. Yes, there are certain countries which have a lot more research in one area than others, or which manufacture a lot more than others, but it’s not as if China, Russia, the USA, Israel, Europe, etc. would be incapable of research, design and manufacturing if those other powers just suddenly ceased to exist.
The Roman Empire had technology that was decades ahead of their contemporaries and that didn’t seem to help them keep the peace - but something else did - an emperor who valued peace and saw it as the goal of the Roman Empire. After the death of Marcus Aurelius, Pax Romana went into decline. It wasn’t technology, or trade, or even military strength which kept the peace - it was a desire for peace, and the people who worked to achieve it.
What exactly do you think the input of a supply chain is?
Raw materials. What are you getting at?
So you're completely ignoring the value-add industries that, due to globalization, other countries haven't needed to develop and have thus become dependent on a few key sources?
Globalization only works because countries don't feel the need to develop key domestic industries. That was broken the minute the US used economic sanctions solely to hamper China's economic development because "oh no they're going to become more powerful than us!"
Yeah, are you going to actually mention what you’re referring to, or continue to broadly gesture at concepts in the hopes that someone will fill in the blanks for you?
Are you intentionally not mentioning that you’re talking about semiconductors because you know I will immediately point out that Chinese manufactures way more semiconductors than the US?
What is your definition of “globalisation working”? Are we still talking about preventing war? If a country is only prevented from going to war because one nation has it over a barrel, that’s not really peace, it’s imperialism.
The semiconductor market is split into two elements: computing and everything else (sensors, power electronics).
Who do you think dominates the compute space?
Weird “split”, I don’t agree with it, but sure, I’ll play along.
For manufacturing, it’s predominantly Asia. China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan are the largest manufacturers of computer components. But a good amount are still made in the US, particularly in Texas, and all over the world there are some other manufacturers.
For design and research, it’s predominantly Asia and western nations, again China, Taiwan, the United States and Japan are prominent, as well as a number of Western European nations such as the United Kingdom.
I really don’t think you know what you’re talking about, do you?
None of that matters for compute, though. I agree that a lot of people design MOSFETs and sensors in China... That's not really relevant in terms of computational capacity. Neither is the capacity to manufacture capacitors and resistors. Neither is the capacity to manufacture small microelectronics because the compute done on them is negligible.
People talk about semiconductors in terms of the computational gap exposed by smaller technology nodes.
…what? I didn’t mention anything that you’re writing about in your comment. I just basically listed countries that have a strong manufacturing or design of microprocessors. For example TSMC in Taiwan, Intel in the US, Samsung in Korea and SMIC in China are some of the biggest players.
You wanna explain how any of this helps prevent war?
SMIC lacked investment for ages and they're all dependent on ASML (until sanctions got the Chinese government to throw billions into building domestic EUV lithography capability, I guess).
It’s so funny how you just have no idea about things until I mention them, and then you Google them to have something to argue about. It’s a bit like ChatGPT. You probably came into this conversation thinking that the only companies that exist are AMD and Intel and now you’re talking about EUV photolithography machines lmao. Excuse me but that’s not relevant to compute that’s microelectronics!!!
Google please help me what is microcontroller? What is RISC-ARM? It means that my limbs are imperilled?
Buddy, do you know what you're talking about? It really sounds like you don't.
The fuck is a RISC-ARM?
Until it has not
The US has shown that they're willing to weaponize their position in the West to block development of technology by key rivals like Russia, China, and India. The dependence that these powers had on Western technology is a key motivator against war... But today? If the US can unilaterally restrict access anyway, what's the motivation?
The dependence they had on Western technology was a key motivator against war precisely because the US can unilaterally restrict access to their tech. Going to war means losing US tech, and Russia decided that war was worth losing US tech
Except the US was already demonstrating their willingness to restrict access to tech. We saw that in China when the US restricted access to semiconductors and semiconductor equipment because of the domestic issue in Xinjiang.
Wars are very costly, and wars between nuclear superpowers would be world ending. US and USSR had no trade to speak of and didn't go to war for these reasons.