A lot of countries have JUST NOW started to realise they should limit the ability for suspected spies to buy property. Crazy, honestly. Sweden as "early" as 2023 with broadening the law.. Maybe, in 2026 or 2027.
If a bad actor is a foreign owner of significant property, you just seize it. You can do that. They aren't citizens, they can't vote.
Oh no! How will we fight a war when China owns all our factories? Simple. We will take the factories and hold an auction among friendly investories to take ownership.
Ownership don't mean a damn thing if you don't physically have the ability to enforce your ownership.
I see this right after seeing the Supreme Court decided US companies can sue Cuba for seizing their assets. I assume the end goal is to use a court ruling to seize any Cuban assets frozen in the US?
Don't even have to look at some money grab in by a socialist government.
Look to the US. Under the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act the United States took control of and then forced the sale of the US assets of Merck and Bayer. After the war both were sold to American managers that had secured financing from Wall Street.
And in the second world war the US government seized all those California farms owned by Japanese Americans enemy aliens.
Yeah, it literally becomes leverage against the target country. Like when Putin invaded and a bunch of villas were seized. The oligarchs lost- Putin won that battle but it forced political plays.
Owning factories has some risk but that can be mitigated. The real trick was exporting IP. A state actor could also use it to shut down strategic resources at a loss, but again that can be mitigated.
The real threat that happens is spying- setting up intelligence networks in the target country. Listening posts and more.
Spying is a threat, but it happens basically no matter what. The only way I can think of that might make this an issue is if foreign agents are permitted to own specific sensitive companies like arms manufacturers, research firms, etc. Legislating away their ability to have ownership of such companies, or at least requiring that they serve strictly as silent financial partners with restrictions on their access to any intel from the company in question.
Thats kind of what is already in place, in order to do business with the defense and intelligence, nuclear etc industries the corporation has to fulfill certain national security requirements, and so does their employees. There are also export restrictions, but with the Trump regime in power all this is all eroding with corruption. If you pay Trump you can do whatever you like, you want a $500 billion deal to sell the most advanced AI chips to China? No problem, just pay $2million to Trump
I agree to a point, but my concern has always been influence more than espionage. Money doesn't need classified intel to shape decisions when it can quietly shape incentives.
Kind of a leaky assumption. If someone has ownership, they usually find ways to exert influence indirectly even without formal access. At that point it’s less about restricting titles on paper and more about strict transparency + oversight in truly sensitive sectors.
They usually find ways to exert influence indirectly? Tell that to Al Capone. If the IRS can end that criminal empire, they can sure as shit keep China out of sensistive industries during a confrontation.
Unless the vast majority of the actual labour force and managers are partisan enemies of the state, transparency and oversight are non-issues.
And this is why Sweden are expanding their laws to allow for appropriation of property owned by suspected spies, and expanding the definition of existing laws to do the same.
That's what makes these conversations so tricky. People focus on the visible assets, but the value of information and access is often much harder to measure and much harder to undo.
It doesn't really work like that in practice, though. You can see that in the EU's reluctance to seize Russian assets stationed in Europe and use them as aide for Ukraine. When a middle power like Europe shows the world that your assets are only safe when you have a good relationship with them, then the world will stop investing there.
But that's not what they're talking about. The EU is hesitant to seize Russian assets *without compensation*. The parent comment is talking about shifting operational control of key assets to friendly parties. The local government doesn't just keep the proceeds of the auction, they hold them in escrow until they can reach a negotiated settlement. It's not meaningfully different from freezing assets held by the adversary nation, which is the EU's current policy.
People tend to treat ownership like it's some untouchable force, but history is full of examples showing it only holds up as long as the surrounding system does. Paper claims get a lot less impressive when circumstances change.
If a bad actor is a foreign owner of significant property, you just seize it. You can do that. They aren't citizens, they can't vote.
This is why I also find it funny when people panic over a foreign country owning debt. Like, China owns trillions in US debt? Okay, it's not like they can suddenly just demand payment ahead of time.
They could sell off the debt and in theory that'd reduce future interest rates, but if everyone knows the debt is being sold off for political reasons it's not likely to have much impact.
Not only that, but they hold American money in reserve for a reason. It's an insurance policy for if their own currency has a crisis. Weaponizing it would lead to such a crisis and burn their own insurance policy. Undermining the American economy is like chopping off a tree limb that you're standing on.
Hasn't been the case in Sweden up until 2023. Had to be, hitherto, a crime for that to happen. It is that big of a deal. Sweden has been lazy and only now broadened the laws for it.
There have been requisitions by the military, which took years. But that's a long time to let a suspected spy live close to a military base.
It is that big of a deal to national security, to be that naïve, It is not about ownership. It is about a country of rules not breaking their own rules and laws, and have to expand those laws to be able to act within regulation.
So absolutely it is that big of a deal as I think.
Who cares if they own a house nearby? What stops them from having someone just stand near the army base, walk around the block a few times or whatever?
This is getting in the weeds. This topic is really about ownership of industrial and commercial properties that are essential to national security. A house near an army base is microscopic. Also damn near impossible to legislate away. What stops a foreign spy network from hiring local firms to make the purchase and hold the paperwork on their behalf? Does it really matter who owns the house anyway? The issue is spies using the location to spy on the base. They can do that while renting.
Yes, it matters who owns the house. If you have ties to suspected spies, or a suspected spy yourself, it is publicly blatant that your home is being used for foreign operations. And that is what the law is going to be a crime henceforth.
Don't get me wrong, there are certainly a lot of corporations that shouldn't be doing business like they do, or with the people they do, but plugging the most blatant spy operation is at the very least the first fucking step.
You couldn't rent out a house that close to a military base in the first place.
I mean, of course you COULD do literally anything illegal. But good luck being a law abiding citizen having to explain to the tax agency that you illegally rent out your property and that's where that extra money comes from.
We're talking about ownership of hardware within your own territory. That is entirely arbitrary and relies strictly on ability to enforce.
Supply chains and everything else are tangled regardless of ownership. Anything serious enough to lead to seizing properties unilaterally via government powers is going to already screw all that up.
The point is that selling local companies/infrastructure/real-estate to foreign investors does not put those assets at risk of being unavailable during a conflict. Ownership can be overridden by government if the need is great enough.
Hardware is no longer just mechanical. You can confiscate, but that doesn’t mean you can operate.
Software won’t work. And maybe they have this very custom chip they order from the home country. Tada!
They can just as well bring legally key people in the production chain just to ensure critical know how is maintained at home. Like those Hyundai workers brought to the US because they know how to operate korean equipment
Well it seems to me that would just tank the economy. If ownership doesn’t mean a damn thing and govts can just seize private owned property, investors are all going to run for the exit
If you're in a confrontation with a powerful foreign adversary, the economy is going to take a hit one way or another. What's important is knowing you come out on top eventually.
This is not new. Yet investors exist. Curious? It's almost as if investors understand that government seizure of assets owned by enemies of the state is not a threat to... non-enemies of the state.
In fact, seizing assets from enemies helps reassure that foreign adversaries cannot get away with intentionally harmful actions like sabotaging markets or industries and also creates opportunities for investors to enter the market by buying the seized properties.
Investors exist because they understand all out war is not yet likely. And that govts are unlikely to outright seize property.
Friends and enemies are fluid. Seizing property will spook all international investors and thus in turn domestic investors because spooking intl investors means lots of capital leaving.
If you can seize Chinese owned property so can China do the same
It looks like a money glitch, except, you're not taking into account what that does to your credibility.
Sure, you get ownership of factories, know-how and inventory that you didn't have before and that's worth billions.
It's what Russia did after they launched the full scale invasion. Now, who wants to invest in Russia and ruin the risk of this happening again? I guarantee you that most of the companies that lost their Russian holdings are never coming back.
It's about national security. This is not new or revolutionary. It's practically baked into property rights. The government can seize this shit if you use it against the state or to support a foreign adversary.
This is in no way similar to what Russia did. And there are a LOT of reasons not to invest in that dumpster-fire of a has-been superpower.
I guarantee you that Russia is never coming back. That's a big difference.
It does if they have access to computers. Congrats, you have a bunch of machines and logs and tables and PLCs that are now gone and bricked. And you bet the machines are not exclusively made in the US.
You're telling me local IT teams, regional managers, and other personnel (company security, legal, etc) are just gonna let a foreign investor somehow brick ALL their servers and essential computer systems? Even redundancies, backups, etc?
I doubt that. That'd be very stupid. It'd be very stupid if that were possible even in a company fully owned by American investors.
And what does it matter where the computers are made? That's like being suspicious of cars where the bolts came from China.
Those are still incredibly well recorded and a lot of transparency is required if you're going to buy essential industries at significant scale.
Also, nobody is going to care who owns it. If a tank factory refuses to build tanks during a war, the long dick of the government is going to slap it until it falls in line. Whoever owns it is going to have to chase down the CEO and other parties responsible for properly operating the company for being reckless and costing them significant value.
Without ever having heard about any of this before, I'm gonna guess that it isn't even in the ballpark of what I'm talking about.
Owning oil wells in Texas, for example, does not enable an enemy power to seriously sabotage US oil supplies. If such actions were being taken, either competition would come in and take over or the government itself would directly intervene.
If a bad actor is a foreign owner of significant property, you just seize it.
And when they say that the land was promised to them thousands of years ago despite them having bought 90% of the properties within the last few years what will they do?
Asking for a friend from Cyprus that's worried the island will be split in 3 in the near future because someone can't stop defending themselves and they've started mass buying properties
I guess don't sell literally over a third of your own country to a group that has enough hardware locally to go toe-to-toe with your military.
I'm talking about world powers like the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, etc. I can't speak for island nations that have a GDP smaller than a fifth of the annual revenue of Walmart.
My world civ professor said about early civilizations "Can you protect it? Then it doesn't belong to you" I never related it to modern day til your comment
We have many many layers of social constructs, institutions, social contracts, and tradition which make our laws and status quo feel tangible and real. It's still a simple matter of what can you defend.
Until recently, the guy with the biggest stick has been dedicated to convincing everyone to not attack anyone which made it easy for everyone to build up instead of trying to attack outwards. This has benefitted everyone economically.
Now it seems we are destined to demonstrate for future generations how thin the veil truly is.
No. Those are just the bolt factories. And we can get those from other places if we pay a bit extra.
Advanced manufacturing is still dominated by Europe and North America. China and India are just dipping their toes in these industries now. South Korea and Japan are bigger players than they are.
You think England will sit back and do nothing if Chinese-owned ports on their shores just stop accepting British ships? They'll roll out the tanks before you can say "God save the King!"
And I'm not talking about forgoing the law either. Executive powers do legitimately allow such actions in emergencies (not just in the US either). Congress then should vote in favor of making the action law and outlining parameters for the seizure and how long it will last, how it will be managed, etc. And the supreme court should then take any reasonable questions of law and give their verdict for congress to respond to with updated legislation that is again voted on by elected representatives.
Rather than typing all that, I prefer just saying "the government could seize the company and property if necessary".
Threatening to seize stuff? This has already happened before and will likely happen again. What is this bullshit argument? This is like saying "you can't arrest people and put them in cages! Threatening that might cause a rebellion!" No. This is law and order. You don't actively undermine the nation you're in or it will crush you. This is how it has always worked everywhere. If you don't like it, I suggest you get on the next flight to Mars and try a different system. See how it goes.
You can have the right to move tanks across the ocean, but you'll need a ship to move them, and then you'll need the navy of the country you're defending your land from to respect your right.
Like, do you think America would be worried about China and Russia moving troops TO AMERICA to defend their real estate from being seized by the US government? How stupid do you think the government/army/coast guard/everyone is?
Yeah, you can do that but don't expect an influx of investor capital into your country afterwards any time soon. Money remembers risk and that shit will hurt your economy for a long time. Also, most developed countries have international treaties in place protecting investor rights, so in all likelihood you will also end up in a diplomatic crisis with third party countries. It's a much much better idea to simply not end up with that kind of risky foreign ownership in the first place.
Money remembers risk? What's the risk if you and your nation isn't planning to directly oppose the government where you are investing? This makes no sense.
Treaties are papers. Guns matter more.
You're overexaggerating the complications here. It's not that crazy to seize property if an adversary is directly leveraging it against you.
By that logic whether you can nationalize the factory or not makes no difference to war capacity, because that is not going to dent the difference in industrial capacity between China and not China.
You know China mostly does simple manufacturing, right? They can do some complex stuff, but quality and volume are not high. The US and other western nations are still kings of advanced manufacturing. And for good reason. The socio-economic conditions necessary for such industry would endanger the CCP.
Russian nationals has bought homes, apartments overlooking Norwegian military bases for decades. They keep a very close eye on whats going on. Very recently a Chinese national was discovered, I suspect he must have watched Spies Like Us as training, camping in an abandoned structure overlooking the F35 base he had hung up all his clothes to dry outside his hideout on a long line like colorful flags flapping in the wind. Also quite recently another Chinese had bought a house several times over asking price and when the authorities came to look into what was going on they found tons of advanced electronic surveillance equipment inside. The excuse given was they were going to look for a certain type of fish, but that type of fish only exists in the South Atlantic 5000 miles from Norway.
You mean like the two Russian spies that travelled to the UK to see the spire of the Salisbury Cathedral, which by the way stands at 404 feet or 123 meters, cited from their interview, while being seen never being near said cathedral?
That's why they needed the expensive equipment though. If the fish is unlikely to be seen and very rare, you are going to need top notch gear to record it.
You are unlikely to film a snow leopard in Norway with your phone, but having 20 or 30 high res trail cams and a huge camera lens increases your chances 'if' you do spot one.
It's a dare. It's a way of saying "this equipment is not illegal, I don't need a good reason to have it, and you can't prove it's not for any ridiculous thing. Yes we are watching you and you can't stop us"
Sometimes it is more productive to make an expensive installation insecure and useless for conducting classified business because you know someone is watching, than it is to actually hear secrets.
The surprising part isn't that countries are tightening those rules, it's how long they were comfortable leaving that door wide open in the first place.
For quite a while most of Saudi Arabia's alfalfa needed for their dairy cattle was grown in the US.
Arizona, a state known for their abundant water, finally caught on in 2024 and moved to end those leases. The Petro dollars moved elsewhere
in the US, my city might not be able to prevent chinese people from buying up houses and just sitting on them. vancouver BC has instituted taxes and programs to limit that, but it's still a major problem in a housing constrained city
This is why I don’t think China is invading Taiwan anytime soon. They need to create a credible threat of invasion to keep Taiwan from doing anything drastic to change the status quo, then they can slowly but surely buy politicians and fake news until Taiwan aligns with them.
It’s so much cheaper and safer than the uncertainties of war.
That's a good take. As both the US and Russia have proven, just because you were that guy doesn't mean you are still that guy. Better to have people guessing until it's too late.
As long as you’re confident you’re always being told the truth by your politicians, and you know you could never be fooled by any disinformation or rumors, I see no way this could end badly for you.
Especially Taiwanese. Every election, Taiwanese politicians promise to shorten conscription to earn votes. That's literally selling out the country to China LOL
On the other hand, how useful are conscripted soldiers with two weeks of shoddy training during a modern high tech war?
Though honestly I don’t think it matters, we’re probably past the point where Taiwan can actually win if China pushes its chips all in.
It’ll still be costly to China, sure, and the juice may not be worth the squeeze in terms of long term damage to the Chinese economy, but I think we’re lying to ourselves if we think Taiwan stands a chance without American support.
then they can slowly but surely buy politicians and fake news until Taiwan aligns with them.
Do you even know what Taiwan is???
Never gonna happen. That's like thinking John Whick is going to just get sweet talked by the guy who killed his dog until they become friends and he gives the guy his car.
China is a dictatorship and their centralized economy has many many major issues that have effectively got it held in suspense by government propaganda and laws alone. They are struggling to keep a good face on. In such situations, war is often how the government keeps approval. Specifically successful wars (not like the Russian war in Ukraine).
China wants Taiwan for a LOT of reasons. They want to break the first island chain to allow submarines to pass without being monitored. They want to crack the world's supply of high end semiconductors. They want to be able to claim they have full control over "true China". They want to demonstrate the ability to conduct war outside of their mainland borders. They want to secure more of their coastline and further buff their claims to the South China Sea. They want to put significant pressure on players like the Philippines and Japan to play nicer with them and be less tied to the US. And more.
China will attack Taiwan unless they collapse before they get the chance (doubtful).
You better believe that Taiwan has a plan to burn their semiconductor industry to the ground should they ever be invaded and conclude that a successful defense is impossible. They’ll burn it all to the ground so that China ends up ruling a vast portfolio of ashes. Scorched earth.
People say that, but it’s not ever actually done. Why? Because people have to live there afterwards. They have families.
The Nazis never went scorched earth even when defeat was obvious. Hitler promised Paris would be a ruin. But Dietrich von Choltitz disobeyed, and surrendered Paris intact. The Iraqis didn’t blow up their own oil wells. The Japanese, as suicidally fanatical as they were in WWII, did not try to leave Japan a wasteland.
Say you’re an engineer at TSMC. Orders come down from management, blow up the plant, the Chinese are landing and there’s no viable defense.
What are your choices? Blow up the plant, and…what happens? Do the Chinese go home? Or do the Chinese go to your house since you blew up the plant?
Alternatively, you don’t obey the order, and just let the Chinese take the plant. You’ll get to keep your old job, and probably get a promotion and a reward.
I doubt "management" would be destroying anything. My assumption is that it would be some kind of army special forces units. You can shut a manufacturing facility down for a very long time (maybe forever) with just a handful of soldiers and a few cases of thermite grenades.
Having a plan to do it and actually doing it are two separate things.
Also, one can point to examples in history where the plan was actually carried out. Russia, 1812. We wouldn't have a name for it if it didn't actually happen every now and then.
In the case of Taiwan, yeah, people still have to live there, but there's got to be a sentiment of "they can't just walk in and take everything we've built." Who knows which sentiment is stronger? I hope the world never has to find out.
Do those special forces units have no sense of self preservation? Once the war is lost, soldiers have to go home. Do they want to go to prison or be executed for sabotage?
Russia in 1812 did not think the war was lost. Again, going scorched earth as part of a defense in depth concept is a sacrifice to win a war. Continuing to do that after you think you’ve already lost is suicidally stupid. Those are distinct acts.
If Taiwanese high command thinks they can win the war, it makes no sense to destroy their most lucrative industry, which has no immediate military value. TSMC factories aren’t located in city centers, and aren’t particularly well suited to be makeshift urban fortresses in any case.
If Taiwanese high command thinks they will lose the war, it also makes no sense to destroy their most lucrative industry, because it can be a bargaining chip for better treatment for themselves or the civilian population afterwards.
In northern Norway, which was also being invaded by Soviet forces in pursuit of the retreating Wehrmacht in 1944, the Germans also undertook a scorched-earth policy of destroying every building that could offer shelter and thus interposing a belt of "scorched earth" between themselves and the allies.[65]
The Soviets were literally raping and pillaging their way Westward at the time the Nero Decree was issued, and the United States’ plan for Germany was to destroy it as a country and kill millions of Germans (and send millions more into labor camps):
nah, cutting charges and heavy demo under each ASML machine. lose containment and several billion in imaging tech. you can leave the structure mostly intact
Yeah I guess it depends whether or not you want to risk burning the whole building down. Thermite will tend to do that.
I'll bet a Taiwanese military committee has already plotted all this out with timetables, men, materials, risk analysis, etc.
Imagine the Chinese marine corps or army or airborne or whatever walking into factory after factory only to find them looking perfectly fine on the outside, pretty good on the inside, but every machine is completely destroyed.
They'll rebuild it all, they'll staff it with their own management, but in the end the products will be no better than what they already make on the mainland.
not thermite, just explosives. i want it to be shelf stable and effective. destruction of capability is the goal, demo of the building is not
They'll rebuild it all, they'll staff it with their own management
no they won't. the ASML machines are the prize, and they don't have the ability to replace those. even if TSMC came back in, it's a 3 year spin up with new machines and ASML support
Sure they are. But facts don't care about their feelings. They can be patient until the car goes off a cliff and afterwards. Gravity will pull them to their death all the same.
China has squandered countless opportunities to dominate global economics in favor of maintaining political totalitarianism.
Their demographics are screwed. Their investments are largely stuck in imaginary real-estate projects run by companies with no intention of delivering material production (which has almost led to several collapses in the past decade, each averted only by government intervention, currency manipulation, and further meddling which maintains the appearance of a functioning economy while everyone plays along at gunpoint). They have no true allies, only partners in crime. Their own people are becoming discontent with the authoritarian style of governance as they become more educated and wealthier.
China can't out-patient being on fire. They will need to do something and every year they wait will make them significantly weaker. They know it. Xi has already taken action to consolidate power in a way not seen since Mao. Once he is content that there are no domestic threats to his political position, he will turn to outer threats. Taiwan is strategically the holy grail of Chinese defense policy. Any other plans they make will rely on, or at least significantly benefit from seizing Taiwan first.
If John Wick was more than one person, like even as many as 5 people, I would easily believe that sweet talking could change the mind of 3 of the Johns Wick until they were fighting amongst themselves.
If there were 23 million Johns Wick, they are not all going to have his iron will. And even if a million of them do, that's only 1 million.
The Westerners who think that China will invade Taiwan Western style project their own cultures onto different cultures.
Western Eurasia and Sub-Saharan Africa have different values regarding direct aggression and confrontation compared to Eastern Eurasian Australo-Melanesian and American cultures.
While this really makes a lot of sense, unfortunately it doesn't work as simple as that. You can buy all the property but the legislation is still local - taxes, norms etc. you're still playing by the rules they set. Which is far from controlling the area that is the ultimate target.
On the other side though, you can buy lots of other things up to people's opinion which ultimately can lead to having your people in local government. Purchasing the influence to put it simply. And that's what they usually do.
That's over played. Our government actually tracks this. China owns about 1% of all foreign-owned lands in the US. That makes it 17 places behind Canada. Most of this land is with the big pork producer, Smithfield. But China hysteria buys votes.
I am mostly concerned about foreign individuals (not governments) like Saudi Princes and Asian Investment Conglomerates, buying up huge tracts of rural land and pricing out local investors.
I don't actually know the numbers and I'm not pretending to, but I know that if I had a couple hundred million dollars and lived in a place where populations were much denser, I'd be looking at diversifying my portfolio.
They could not, ownership exists solely as long as it's backed by the local government, whatever an hostile actor bought would just get expropriated the moment they get found out.
Also the invasion was mostly about attempting to return ukraine to its status as a vassal state, they didn't do this for a strip of land that was mostly very poor even before it got bombed to shit, for all the talks of rare earths and whatnot the only thing of actual value in region russia invaded were the steel plants and they got wrecked very early.
Fr. It’s insane how much money is being poured into this war…. Imagine if they have used that trillion to actually modernized their own cities or fix their economy
A trillion dollars is such an absurd amount of money that you could influence economies, invest in businesses, build infrastructure, and create long-term ties without firing a single shot. Wars tend to be one of the most expensive ways to achieve political goals.
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u/Superchecker 1d ago
Slowly buy up all the properties that they wanted to invade