CHINA PUT 244 GOVERNMENT SHIPS AROUND TAIWAN IN ONE MONTH — FOUR TIMES LAST YEAR — NEARLY EVERY MACHINE THAT MINES BITCOIN IS BUILT INSIDE THAT CIRCLE

Taiwan’s coast guard counted 244 Chinese government ships around the island in July. A year earlier the number was 58. From May through August it counted 1,247. A US Naval War College analyst says the operations themselves are not new — the scale is. Some of those ships are mapping the seabed and sampling the water, which is what you do before you go hunting submarines. Nobody has blockaded anything. That part is still a scenario, and it should be said plainly. Here is the part that is not a scenario, and that Bitcoiners mostly do not say out loud. The network runs on machines. Nearly all of those machines are made by two companies in mainland China, using chips from fabs a short sail from those 244 ships. China already controls roughly 70% of the world’s germanium and 80% of its gallium, and has required a licence to export tungsten since February 2025. The money is the hardest thing anybody has ever built. The factory that stamps out the machines guarding it is not. That is not an argument against bitcoin. It is an argument for knowing what is actually load-bearing. The protocol survives a blockade — it does not need new machines to keep running, only to keep growing. The people who would feel it are the ones planning a build eighteen months out against a hashprice they cannot buy hardware to earn. A network with no headquarters still has a supplier.