The world is on a knife-edge

The view of an English paraplegic in France

19th April 2024

Late again I know but I’ve been suffering a number of health issues, one of which – another pressure sore – is currently being investigated by my GP and the Specialist at Montlucon Hospital and might see me back in there for another stint of treatment.  It’s the last thing I want but if it’s necessary it’s necessary.  It’s been going on since the end of January and try as hard as they have its bamboozling my nurses.

The war in Ukraine continues unabated and still Western governments continue to hold back giving the Ukrainian government the help they need.  This is so short sighted.  Russia, aided and abetted by China, Iran and North Korea now have the upper hand, taking advantage of the politically driven behaviour of the Republican Party in the USA – home of the brave and land of the free – my arse!  The West should be rearming as a matter of urgency not sitting back like it did in the 1930’s when Hitler was behaving as he did.  Appeasement didn’t work then did it and it won’t work this time either.  Putin is using the same play book, excusing his actions as being in the defence of an ethnic Russian population, who were never under any threat as it was.  Hitler did the same for ethnic Germans in the Sudetanland, then part of Czechoslovakia who he then invaded.  This is how autocratic regimes behave, just look at the behaviour of China for instance, another autocratic regime hell bent of taking over Taiwan. There was an article in The Guardian this morning by Owen Jones arguing that ‘Instead of stockpiling weapons and stoking fears of coming conflict, we should be focusing on keeping the peace.’  As much as I like some of his stuff I think he has totally lost the plot on this one.  Appeasing autocratic, power crazy bullies has never worked and never will.  Brute force needs a similar forceful response to challenge it.  I have no doubt that if Putin isn’t stopped he won’t stop.   If Putin is allowed to defeat Ukraine militarily the rest of the old Warsaw Pact countries will be at risk. Similarly any diplomatic ‘peace’ that sees him retain control of the Ukrainian territory will further embolden him and his ambitions.  That a country such as Hungary that suffered under the boot of the Soviet Union as they did beggars belief – Soviet troops invaded and killed 30,000 people.  Orban’s behaviour is at odds with the principle underlying the European Union and as hard as it will be on the people of Hungary they should be ejected from the EU.  They keep voting for him – supposedly – they choose their master and his politics so they should be denied the financial support of the EU.

Iran is also taking advantage of the war in Ukraine by supplying Russia with the weapons it needs to prosecute the destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure and citizens and has added further to the problem by deliberately targeting Israel, an escalation of the proxy war they have been waging by arming and financing Hamas and Hezbollah.  I can only see this as a deliberate attempt to escalate the problems surrounding the whole Palestinian problem into an all-out war in the Middle East.  I’ve made clear in earlier Blogs my opinion of Netanyahu’s nationalist regime in Israel but people need to remember Israel is a nuclear power, making them the dominant military force in the region, and if he thinks he as to push the button hr sure as hell will, consigning the region to a living hell.  These are dangerous times, of that be sure.

Then we have to consider China.  Communist China has always thought that Taiwan has always been theirs and there is another reason now making their expansionist plans more pressing – cutting edge microprocessors.  China are great at putting smartphones , routers and other microprocessor dependent technology together – cheap labour by the millions and massive investment in the education and infrastructure necessary – but they can’t make the microprocessors needed to develop the chips for those needed to make AI processors.  The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company – TSMC – basically make all the chips needed in what they call their ‘fabs’ – fabrication plants and these are dependent on the most up-to-date Extreme Ultra-Violet (EUV) photolithography etching machines.  This is a complicated story and way beyond my 39 year old BTEC Level 3 in Electrical and Electronic Engineering but basically chips have developed from being designed by people hand drawing transistors on a sheet of silicon – who are Americans, masking it, painting the sheet with Kodak photo processing chemicals shining the light through an inverted camera lens and then cleaning up the result to give a working chip.  Over the years this was developed using shorter and shorter light wave-lengths to squeeze as many, smaller transistors onto a given size of silicon, This involved the development of EUV.  Since then the FinFET was developed which then allowed designers to stack transistors on top of each of each other, increasing power, reducing power consumption and enabling parallel processing, originally used for graphics cards and now the backbone of AI. EUV and therefore current semi-conductor manufacturing is dependent on the suppliers of the lasers needed for the EUV machines – who are Americans – and the manufacturers of the insanely expensive ‘fab’ machines – a Dutch company called ASML.

As I said, it’s an insanely expensive business and insanely complicated, involving the most cutting edge technology, global supply chains that include a myriad of Chinese outfits.  Follow the links or go looking on the web if the technology interests you but for a really good idea of why all of this is of interest to the Chinese and why they want to control it and the worlds reliance of the latest technology that will develop with it read ‘Chip War’ by Chris Miller – this link gives lots of options to get a copy and I wholeheartedly recommend it.  As far as I’m aware at this moment in time the Russians aren’t in the game at all and because of Western export restrictions the Chinese can’t get hold of the most recent equipment needed. 

I’ll have to give this up now as I can’t sit for long on my poorly bottom so I’ll love you and leave you.

I’ll try to be back soon as I’ve got lots to say about the current state of politics in the UK – the collapse of public services, the implosion of the Tory Party and the backsliding of the anything but democratically socialist Labour Party, never mind the alleged financial crookery in the SNP!

TTFN

Jem