Spilling American Blood & Treasure For Semiconductor Chips

The below is an incredibly revealing interview clip featuring Republican Representative from Texas Michael McCaul. In the exchange with Chuck Todd of NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, McCaul bluntly states (or perhaps inadvertently admits) that he’s willing to go to war with China over Taiwan based on protecting the world’s semiconductor supply. Importantly, he is the powerful chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“Make the basic case for why Americans not only should care about what happens in Taiwan, but should be willing to spill American blood and treasure to defend Taiwan,” Todd asked at the outset of the interview. Rep. McCaul responded immediately that “no one wants that” and this it’s about “deterrence”.

But then he did get to directly addressing the question, and he began by emphasizing that “About 50 percent of international trade goes through the international straits, but I think more importantly, Chuck, is that [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company] manufactures 90 percent of the global supply of advanced semiconductor chips. If China invades and either owns or breaks this, we’re in a world of hurt globally.” So he fundamentally responded to a question over whether the US “should be willing to spill blood and treasure” by stressing that it’s about protecting semiconductor chips.

Chuck Todd: Make the case for why Americans should be willing to go to war over Taiwan
Michael McCaul: Well it’s about controlling semiconductors
Todd: So kind of like fighting wars for oil?
McCaul: Uhh, well actually it’s about protecting democracy and freedom pic.twitter.com/CLcPDRyx3T

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 10, 2023

Todd then points out that McCaul essentially just said that American troops should go fight and die merely to protect industrial resources, questioning, “Congressman it almost sounds like the case that would be made in the 60s, 70s, and 80s of why America was spending so much money and military resources in the Middle East.”

“Oil was so important for the economy. Is this sort of the 21st century version of that?” Todd posed. McCaul then hesitantly changed his response, saying it’s more about “protecting democracy and freedom”. 

McCaul was being challenged on comments he recently made about US troops being on the table in order to stand up to China…

We should note that it’s very likely that the majority of Americans might have trouble finding Taiwan on a map, and after two decades of ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East, and now at the moment of many tens of billions of taxpayer dollars being handed over to Ukraine, opening up a new conflict “front” with China over Taiwan would be deeply unpopular, to say the least.