Raising a daughter in Hsinchu while the news talks about blockades

I am a process integration engineer at a foundry in Hsinchu. I will not say which one and I will not say anything about work, customers or yields, please do not ask. I want to write about something else: what it is like to live here, in the middle of a topic that people far away discuss like a strategy game.

The ships on TV

My daughter is 7. During the large drills, the news shows maps with red arrows around our island and ships with names. The drills have names too, like video games. She asked me why the ships are "around us like a circle". I said they are practising. She asked practising for what. I am still thinking about a good answer.

Most days, honestly, life is normal. I go to my 12-hour shift in the bunny suit, my wife takes her to school, we eat at the night market on weekends. People outside imagine we are very worry every day. We are not. We are worry in the background, already few years, like a program running with low priority that never exits.

The silicon shield

You probably heard this idea: the world needs chips from Taiwan so much that nobody can allow a war here. Some people here believe it strongly. Some think it is comforting story. I think it is partly true and very dangerous to rely on.

Now our industry is building fabs in Arizona, Kumamoto, Dresden. From an engineering view this is reasonable, every company wants diversity of supply. From a kitchen-table view in Hsinchu, some people ask: every time a fab opens abroad, does the shield get a little thinner? I do not know the answer. I notice the question is asked more often now.

Export controls

Since the US export rules on advanced chips and equipment from 2022, the industry talks about controls all the time. People in Washington say controls make Taiwan safer. People in other capitals say they make everything more tense. I am an engineer, how to say, I see that both statements can be true for different time horizons, and that nobody who writes these rules lives in my street.

Hawks and doves from far away

I am a status quo person. I want peace, and I want the right to keep living the way Taiwan lives now. I distrust two kinds of people equally: hawks who speak about deterrence as if my daughter is a variable, and doves who tell me to "be realistic" from a safe country. Both speak from far away. Both will be fine whatever happens.

What we actually do

• We have a bag with water, documents, a radio, medicine, cash. The civil defence guide the government published is on our fridge. It feels a little silly. I keep it there anyway.
• We talk to our daughter in a calm voice. A friend here, yoni_haifa, wrote under his post that children copy how calm we look, not what we say. This helped me more than any news analysis.
• We switch off the news after dinner.

I do not have a conclusion. I only wanted people who discuss "the Taiwan question" to know that the question has a 7 years old in it who wants to know why the ships are in a circle.