This is ultimately for the best. Once the US plunders TSMC, no real reason remains for it to protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. There are the usual reasons of prestige and ego and all the rest of it, but when the time comes nobody is going to stand and die for prestige.
Sorry to be off-topic again. This is my last one on this argument
There are 2 ways to take control of a territory and its economy.
1) The smart way (what US calls "democracy"), in which you support to gain power one party that once installed will operate according to your guidelines. You indicate what to do from behind. Currently maybe Taiwan is in this situation with DPP....and may be South Korea just ended in that way too.
2) The anachronistic way: military invasion. You do it when you lose the "democracy game", like in Ukraine after pro-Moscow political party was thrown away in 2014, or like in Latin America in the past, where it was the pro-US party that lost, and so US installed by coup friendly dictators. More recently the so called "color revolution" in Middle East was another faild attempt by US, that eventually reverted to support local dictators.
I'd think almost all the world, Taiwanese people included, and maybe a lot of mainland Chinese too, would much prefer the first way for Taiwan future. But for the first way to succeed you need a big propaganda machine able to operate
outside of your country, and a lot of efforts and experience in forming and steering public opinions. US are masters of this game, they have done it for decades and they invest a lot on this. Billions of dollars are on US budget every year for spreading soft-power: media, newspapers and even single journalists, NGO, politicians, lobbying, etc. On this topic I see China is very behind, but it's important to close the gap at least partially, and not only for Taiwan, but for the control of the world narrative that is paramount for long term success.
