Australia, The Philippines, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and possibly France would join American military intervention. Not to mention Taiwan itself. Probably get logistical support from other places like Singapore, Thailand, etc.
American sentiment would change if mass casualties were inflicted on US troops.
This war scenario is different for Americans than Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. There is direct threat to the American homeland if Taiwan falls. Not to mention destroying our technology infrastructure and industry.
I’m saying it is highly likely that the next leap in AI technology will require massive amounts of compute. On the order of tens of billions per year. I’m also saying that there are a small number of companies that would have access to that level of compute (or financial capital).
In other words, it’s is MORE likely that an OpenAI/Google/Microsoft/Grok/Anthropic gets us closer to AGI than a startup we haven’t heard of yet. Simply because BigTech has cornered the market and has a de facto monopoly on compute itself. Even if you had raised $10 billion in VC funding, you literally can not buy GPUs because there is not enough manufacturing capacity in the world to fill your order. Thus, investors know this and capital is flowing to BigTech, rather than VC funds. Which creates the cycle of BigTech getting bigger, and squeezing out VC money for startups.