Semiconductor manufacturers in Taiwan can remotely disable their chip-making machines in the event of a Chinese invasion.

Depends how its set up. So long as it's fully independent and disconnected from existing digital infrastructure it should be safer. It could be as simple as explosives hard-wired with a buried line running up into some bunker up in the mountains.

Geopolitics aside, the technical architecture implementation of this mechanism is really interesting for me. I think over all, having extra ability to disable these systems would prevent US launching attacks against the plants — which could cause spill over local civilian injuries — but there’s just so many more things to consider.

Is it a dead-man switch style of setup, where if it doesn’t get authorization from HQ after some time, it will stop working? Or is it a kill switch style of setup, where they can remotely issue a command to stop operation? Because different vectors then come up depending on the securing method. For example: Dead-man switch might be tricked/overcame by turning back the clock, whereas kill switch might be circumvented by severing the network connection before the command could be issued (literally cut the underwater cables before they start the invasion).

How is the mechanism itself secured? If it is certificate based like everything else, then we’d have to worry about the certificate signing authority getting pressured into signing certificates by state backed actors.

Would really love to learn about the setup one day after all these is over, to learn about the thinkings that’s been done on such an important piece of … “infrastructure”?

They'd have everything to lose. Everyone wants those machines. Disabling or destroying those machines is like slashing the only nice life raft on the open ocean. Sure, there are others, but they have cracked rubber and don't seem as firm. Bleeding edge fabs are the oil of the 21st century.

Ok winnie the pooh, like they are going to tell you

Probably wiping process control code from the systems that contain tons of fiddly hard to find constants and other information.

I'm really hoping for thermite. A lot of thermite.

They could probably overload the circuitry to make it unusable. Or use like, IDK, mini explosives?

Probably wipe the firmware of the machines so they can't be used.

(Fun fact: FIRMware is the in-between of HARDware and SOFTware.)

What happened if... purely hypothetically... China develops competitive chip fabrication plants that exports at scales rivalrious to Taiwan.

And then fear of an invasion provokes detonation of Taiwan's own facilities.

Wouldn't this turn China into a domestically source monopoly of high end chips?

The US Army War College published a paper outlining the plan awhile back.

To start, the United States and Taiwan should lay plans for a targeted scorched-earth strategy that would render Taiwan not just unattractive if ever seized by force, but positively costly to maintain. This could be done most effectively by threatening to destroy facilities belonging to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the most important chipmaker in the world and China’s most important supplier.

First day of job training is to keep the one machine running that keeps the place from exploding.

Even if it's disabled, like do you really think they'd just install their own OS? Or find away around the part that's disabled? Like you can still jail break an iPhone

Techies: what if it bricks accidentally?

Manufacturer: spinning the key fob we didn't think that far, to be honest

A few moments later

Manufacturer: proceeds to drop the remote and accidentally bricks everything

This is entirely expected to any computer avid person tho no? Its like all computerized things today. Military equipment, trains, tractors, cars, web services, phones etc. Everything is backdoored and remotely controllable.

I'm assuming "disable" in this case is slightly more than just turning it off. I wouldn't be surprised if the building isn't left standing after it's "disabled" here.

This sounds more like a deadman switch.

I hope its a little better than remote access to disable. Internet access can be knocked out and cell signals jammed. Hopefully they've gorba deadman switch and disable things immediately in the event of an invasion.

China should just replicate Taiwan somewhere like they replicate Paris, Venice, etc. and call it a day.

West Taiwan friend. Lesser sounds odd when it's more populated and geographically larger. Though inferior sounds fitting

Just add some brown people and throw a wedding. The factory will be leveled within hours.

My understanding is that some of the benefits China would get from invading Taiwan is the control of Taiwan's world-leading semiconductor industry. So making it public knowledge that any invading force (i.e. China) would not be able to take over their production capabilities is a small deterrent.

Is it not obvious? To discourage Chinese invasion.

China wants Taiwan's technology and manufacturing. If they destroy it, China will gain nothing.

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Oh yeah to answer your question. It's for the security and maintainability of the chinese government, pretty clever if you ask me. Now if I could remote control my wife(s)

try the archived copy