Friday Squid Blogging: Stubby Squid – Source: www.schneier.com

Clive Robinson • June 14, 2025 8:45 AM

@ StephenM, ALL,

With regards,

“Aus will pay a whole lot and receive nothing.”

Not quite true… It will receive international ridicule and the Aus negotiation team will be invited to be the table center piece at the next “Thanksgiving Dinner” just like any well stuffed turkey…

I’ve pointed out that the US has no intention of delivering let alone “value for money”, it’s just a never never plan to get money in the door to off-set US horrendously bad ship building. Even the UK will be pushed past the Parson’s Nose as the people here making the UK side of it were “idiots squirming under Boris the blob”.

Note the very recent less than subtle blackmail from Mr “Signal Group with Journo” Headsmack.

The US is telling NATO countries the same “Spend more on defence” actually meaning “Only spend it with the US” and have what you’ve paid for be grabbed or worse.

I’ve mentioned the whole reason behind the US Chips Act etc is to get the Semiconductor FABs and technology into the US where they will be in effect “grabbed under the war act” along with all IP etc (and employees with commercially confidential information will have it extracted in one way or another…).

The Taiwanese Government is certainly aware of thid which is why they’ve put pressure on TSMC not to do anything more than “play along”.

Because the Taiwanese Government knows the only thing keeping CCP boots off of their island, is the US military, and the only reason the US military is in the South China Seas and environs is the likes of the TSMC plants providing chips the US Mil are reliant upon in more ways than one.

So watch TSMC play along, yes they will build plants in the US over the next half decade or so, but without really investing. But you can probably guess it will be “third line” chips for the Auto industry etc using FAB equipment not upto making first line chips.

At a “pickpocket convention” you keep your gold watch in your inner button down pocket, and put a polished “brass ring” on your waist coat chain[1].

[1] A brass ring was once a marketing tool on carousel rides. It cost the ride owner nothing, and even helped make the ride look more popular thus brought in more people with money to be fleeced. For some reason I’ve never really grasped people in the US think grabbing the brass ring is a measure of status (read Catcher in the Rye). Rather than the marketing gimmick that they had been fobbed off with as part of the capitalist path to “rob them blind for profit”.

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