> Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though;
For now.
The majority of solar panels are made in China (85%), and they plan to invade Taiwan in just a few years, possibly as soon as 2027, at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production or defend Taiwan and cut ourselves off from the source of almost all manufactured products, and especially solar panels.
>and they plan to invade Taiwan in just a few years
Can you share your sources for that valuable intelligence? Military analysts would really be interested to learn that. Or is that form the same manufactured scaremongering genre as "Iran is 6 weeks away from building nuclear weapons" and "Iraq has WMDs" to justify endless defense spending, military interventions and warmongering.
> at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production
You can't just commandeer semi fabs like you're carjacking a Hyundai for a joyride. Semi fabs need constant parts and on-prem staff and always-on telemetry from ASML & friends to run. If that's gone, you're left with a very expensive warehouse that can't do shit.
You don't build out a massive fleet of amphibious landing craft, mobile piers, and other similar Navy ships that can only be used for invading another country via the sea... for self-defense. These have one purpose, and China is mass-producing them.
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-CHINA/TAIWAN-INVASION/z...
https://www.ft.com/content/36a00ba4-6178-4267-9786-3e0b59abe...
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-taiwan-military-naval-...
> "Iran is 6 weeks away from building nuclear weapons"
It is the breakout time, not the schedule.
It is incredible to me how pervasive the misunderstanding of this statement is!
I've had real-life conversations with project managers just like this:
PM: "How long would this project take?"
Me: "One month."
... two weeks later ...
PM: "How long would the project take to finish?"
Me: "One month."
PM: "You said that two weeks ago! It should only take two weeks to finish!"
Me: "Why would you think that? We never started the project! It wasn't approved. You didn't approve it, personally. The effort is four weeks. If you approve and we start today, it will still take that long to complete."
... two more weeks later ...
PM: "Why isn't the project finished!? You said one month a month ago!"
Me: "... wat?"
They obviously want to be able to invade Taiwan, yes, nobody serious would assert that they're developing amphibious capacity for self defence.
That's not the same thing as planning to invade in 2027, though. Militaries can need a capability without an imminent specific plan to actually use it. See the US's amphibious capacity. See nukes.
Taiwan cannot make chips without western inputs and spare parts, so China taking over Taiwan or Korea or Japan doesn’t really give them access to making those chips.
Rather, in a case of such an acute confrontation, it denies their adversaries access to the highest-end chips, too.
But the solar panels we already have don't suddenly stop working, which is an important difference between sourcing solar panels from a potential enemy and sourcing raw fossil fuels from one. There's also nothing stopping the US or other trading partners from making solar panels, China is just the most convenient and cheapest source as it is for many other things. And to that point, the end of trade between the US and China would be incredibly damaging to both countries whether or not we buy solar panels from them now.
I asked Claude, and now I know that there are nice, basically undetectable, plausibly deniable ways to render solar panels useless within months, or, with some preparation, days. It seems that open-source, carefully scrutinized panel controller firmware may be critically important.
Your Claude may have been hallucinating - solar panels have no microcontrollers or microprocessors, and hence have no need for firmware. Battery Charge controllers -- that are downstream of panels do have firmware, but even if a booby-trapped firmware were to short-circuit the panels, they'd be undamaged.
Solar panels are usually connected to inverters or other power circuits that make the variable voltage they provide usable as a stable source downstream.
During operation a string of solar cells is under a pretty high voltage. It makes sodium ions from the covering glass infiltrate slowly into the silicon, potentially ruining the p-n junction ("potential-induced degradation", PID). Usually an industry-grade panel controller applies a reverse voltage during night time, to drive the sodium ions back from the silicon. A rogue controller might instead apply the same voltage, accelerating PID instead of reverting it (and kill it in several months). A really insidious producer might add a strip of extra sodium-rich material near the normal electric conductors, which would be triggered by voltage higher than normal operation to flood the silicon with sodium (and kill it in several days).