We could be plunged back into the horrible era that was ... the 2010s! There wouldn't be a global collapse if TSMC was lost. It'd be an inconvenience that sets the semiconductor industry back a decade or so. Most advanced technology hasn't had time to have an impact on the global economy yet and 98% of people won't notice much in practice if all the TSMC foundries exploded tomorrow. There'd maybe be some shortages while other companies build new foundries - although even then it isn't a given people would care. China seems to be about to flood the market with manufacturing capacity.

> whole premise of TSMC is that losing TSMC would cause such a global economic collapse that defending Taiwan is the only option to prevent this

This never works. The security through economy pitch. It has never, ever worked.

America was a reliable security guarantor. We promised to protect and had honour. Honour isn’t in the American cultural vocabulary anymore. So the guarantees are proven useless and everyone has to scramble back into realpolitik.

> The whole premise of TSMC is that losing TSMC would cause such a global economic collapse that defending Taiwan is the only option to prevent this from happening.

TSMC just hits the media often. If Taiwan goes the global economy will have way more problems than just TSMC. There is a long list of companies in many supply chains that would be impacted (not just computing).

Is this all because US are afraid China will own the world through HPC/AI ?

How many of us really depend on the latest cpu to survive ?

Intel/Samsung are behind. That is a fact.

The question is, is it better to wage a massive war that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and many lives than to make an equal investment into the semi-conductor industry.

The US cannot realistically technically stop missiles raining down on the fabs on Taiwan should China decide to do that.