2026-04-29
minor edits 2026-05-27
Maybe especially focus on persuading Taiwanese govt and public about AI pause
Disclaimer
- Quick Note
- Contains politically sensitive info
- target audience - lesswrong
- I haven't verified all these claims a lot.
Summary
- A lot of discussion on Lesswrong assumes that either CCP or US executive branch will take over Taiwan. Some discussion assumes "middle powers" like Russia, India, Pakistan, etc will intervene.
- However, Taiwan is a democracy and its leaders and people can choose to blow up TSMC themselves, before any other country takes over them.
- It might be high leverage to organise protests in Taiwan, or figure out persuasion strategy for Taiwanese people, when it comes to ASI risk.
Main
- Some LW discourse seems to implicitly assume that Taiwanese politicians and billionaires, and the Taiwanese public don't have much say in what happens to TSMC.
- There is some writing on lesswrong that assumes either the leaders of the CCP or the US executive branch will inevitably take control of Taiwan via military invasion. See also: This LW post on Taiwan war timelines
- There is also some writing that talks about how "middle powers" can intervene, which seems to me to be a euphemism for asking either the Indian or Pakistani or Russian executive branch to drop ballistic missiles on TSMC. See also: ControlAI on middle powers. It's not clear to me who "middle powers" even refers to here and this lack of naming names seems intentional. Non-nuclear states don't matter IMO. Executive branches of Israel, UK and France are unlikely to ever defect against the US executive branch. The North Korean leader is unlikely to ever defect against the CCP. This basically leaves executive branches of India, Russia and Pakistan as the only "middle powers" who can pull off something as radical as this.
- However, whatever happened to just convincing people in Taiwan directly? TSMC has a democractically elected govt and an independent military, that gives them atleast some minimum amount of time to decide what to do with TSMC, before anyone successfully invades them.
- Some options that are possible if you could actually convince people in Taiwan about an AI pause:
- I think it is possible, atleast in theory, for a handful of politicians and billionaires in Taiwan to decide to shut down TSMC themselves, if they were convinced about the need for an AI pause.
- I think it is possible for them to successfully install a deadman's switch in TSMC, such that they could blow up TSMC before it falls into hands of either the US executive branch or the CCP. Credibly committing to destroying your own infrastructure to repel invaders is called scorched earth strategy, and has been observed in many previous military conflicts.
- I also think it is possible, atleast in theory, for the Taiwanese public to try to shut down TSMC, either via a nonviolent referendum or election, or via an armed revolution, if they were convinced about the need for an AI pause.
- Lastly, I do think it is possible, atleast in theory, for a militia (probably composed of Taiwanese citizens) to attempt to blow up TSMC without attempting to get consent of either the public or the elites. You could call such a militia a terrorist group if you like.
- All these plans require actually persuading people in Taiwan about the risks of ASI.
- Note that what persuasion strategy works in Taiwan probably won't be the same as what works in the US, due to cultural differences. I don't expect a translated version of Yudkowsky's book to sell as many copies in Taiwan for instance.
- I am not an expert on persuasion or on what these cultural differences are. My guess (from very little data) is that it overlaps with the social left versus social right divide, altruism being directly towards family/community/etc versus the world.
- I think someone should actually try to understand Taiwanese culture a lot and figure out effective persuasion strategy for them.
2026-05-25
Update
- There have been many recent protests in Taiwan. If you do manage to get some Taiwanese citizens onboard, protests might (or might not) be a fast way to spread the message.
2026-05-28
Update
- I cold-emailed some of the famous youtubers in Taiwan with a list of the top anti-ASI youtubers in Taiwan. If anyone is building emailing infrastructure, they could add these people to the list of people to whom emails are to be targeted.
- I'm not posting the email list but you can just ask gpt-5.5 for the list of youtubers, then find their email addresses on youtube.
Subscribe
Enter email or phone number to subscribe. You will receive atmost one update per month
Comment
Enter comment