Industrial policy has been a frequent subject on Smith's blog, for those who don't follow it. (He's for it, and thinks that Biden's industrial policy was mostly good - it's worth following the links in this post.) This post focuses on defense-related geopolitical industrial policy goals and pros and cons of anticipated changes under the incoming Trump administration and Chinese responses. Particularly, he highlights two major things China can do: Restrict exports of raw materials (recently announced) and use their own industrial policy to hamper the West's peacetime industrial policy (de facto policy of the last 30 years). These are not extraordinary insights, but it's a good primer on the current state of affairs and policies to pay attention to in the near-future.
Noah Smith: Manufacturing is a war now
noahpinion.blog
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Notes -
Ignoring geopolitics, which others have commented on, Taiwan produces over half of the world's semiconductors and almost all of the most advanced ones.
War between China and Taiwan would almost certainly throw global supply chains into chaos in the short to medium term (possibly longer, depending on how intact the industry remained after any conflict), as well as cede an advantage to China in fields such as AI which require the most advanced chips.
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