alt Hacker News>If a US-China War was to arise, worst case we would probably see a mass reversion back to 2018-22 level technology, which isn't the end of the world.
It wouldn't be the end of the world if those 2018 chips came at 2018 prices and only impacted commodity stuff like phones, datacenters and laptops, but they'll be at 10x the 2018 price and impact critical stuff like automotive, the cars and trucks that gets your food delivered to the supermarket, and if those become impossible to buy or fix anymore, then your groceries will also get more expensive, triggering an end-of-the-world riot from taxpayers who can't afford food anymore.
People need to view this issue as not just being stuck with 2018 laptops and phones which isn't that bad, but has much wider societal implications.
> impact critical stuff like automotive, the cars and trucks
Most capacity for legacy nodes is already ExTaiwan and ExChina. TSMC leapfrogged American and Korean fabs in the late 2010s/early 2020s with sub-14nm process nodes, but Samsung and Intel have caught up for 5nm and 7nm capacity. And Taiwanese firms have largely diversified OSAT and ATMP away from Taiwan and China to ASEAN, US, and India.
This is something everyone adjacent to this space has been thinking about and acting on since 2017.
> only impacted commodity stuff like phones, datacenters and laptops
Data Center and enterprise applications are prioritized in most ExTaiwan sub-7nm fabs such as Intel 18A.
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A US-China War over Taiwan would be devastating, but not getting an M1 Macbook will be the least of your worries.