Taiwanese politicians, like those under American-style democracy in many regions, only care about safeguarding their own interests and have no concern for how to protect the interests of the public. Once TSMC’s factories are completed in Japan and the United States and the technology is secured, Taiwan will no longer have any value worth protecting. Of course, the politicians can always take planes and leave in advance.
Not necessarily. If TSMC doesn’t build these fabs in Japan or USA, these governments might just mandate that chips are manufactured elsewhere. Intel could have a big comeback.
This keeps ppl locked in to the TSMC universe. The Japan and US fabs produce just a fraction of what these countries need.
Right now is an AI goldrush. They can get crazy lucrative investments and lock in amazing deals. In a decade the Chinese tech will catch up and the AI boom will slow down and the Taiwanese will have to coast on what they have. They have to capitalize on this moment as much as they can b/c it's not going to last long. Things are going to get much tougher very soon
If there aren't significant changes in the trajectory of world politics the people in charge might just be planning their exit to the fabs they're building in Japan and the US.
You speak like the Chinese catching up with the technology is inevitable. The Chinese aren't behind in semiconductor and airplane technology for lack of trying. They are constantly trying to catch up to a moving goal post.
There is an established playbook that the Chinese have used for decades when taking over an industrial sector from other countries. They funnel vast amounts of state funding into it, sell at or below cost for decades, win the low end market, and then slowly and gradually move up the technology chain. It's worked for almost everything, but it's this last part that just isn't working for them with semiconductors and aviation. They aren't capable of catching up fast enough in these two fields. These are sectors that are both too large for any one country to do well on their own. Even for someone as large as China. It requires a global supply chain.
PRC generating as much STEM/skilled talent than OECD combined... that's enough for entire semi supply chain and 2 civil aviation companies.
Aviation is functionally caught up, as in if PRC wants to throw together a narrow or wide body on domestic components short term, they can at scale and service domestic market with less fuel efficiently. The primary reason COMAC uses western components is for faster global certification.
PRC Semi progress beating western analysts of catchup, instead of 10 years to EUV they're looking ~7/8 years. Again global semi supply chain is just a handful of countries with fraction population as PRC. And all western semi players projected to have talent shortage in the 100,000s, so that moving goal post likely going to move slower and slower vs PRC convergence.
Semi easier medium/long term problem since PRC _only_ country projected without semi talent shortage, i.e. current trends and forces point to inevitable convergence and PRC.
Ironically aviation harder problem because exporting outside of PRC market is matter of geopolitics vs pure technical/state capacity.
Looking at trend lines, west simply not capable of staying ahead.
The US protected Taiwanese sovereignty for decades before they even had a single semiconductor fab. This idea of "the silicon shield" just shows a complete ignorance of the history of Taiwan and its place in the geopolitical order.
Decades in which China started as peasant army(US admin view) and wasn't mostly a peer adversity. But, that changed almost a decade ago and defending Taiwan will become more costly and time passes. New American security document, mostly focusing on America, even acknowledges this.
Trump has openly stated that there would be no military retaliation by the US in case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Only an economic one. And we have seen what that is worth after the Krim was taken. It lasted a few years and then sanctions started getting dropped.
So the time of military US protection is behind us.
I believe you mis remembered it. He didn't rule out military intervention.
In an interview reported by Reuters, he said he’d impose 150%–200% tariffs if China “went into Taiwan,” and when asked about using military force against a blockade he said it “would not come to that” because Xi “respects me” and knows he’s “crazy.”
TSMC can shut the fabs down whenever they want. If the US think they can take over a fab like it's a t-shirt factory and keep it running without TSMC's cooperation they are sorely mistaken. What are you going to do when none of the Taiwanese workers turn up for work, or worse they do turn up and sabotage the fab.
If you don’t think the US security apparatus will come up with a reasonable plan for doing just that within 2 months of it opening, I don’t think you’re thinking hard enough about this.
> What are you going to do when none of the Taiwanese workers turn up for work, or worse they do turn up and sabotage the fab.
You’re going to offer them a lot of money, citizenship, and exfiltration of their family to turn up at work, and threaten them with lifetime in supermax if they sabotage anything.
What US judge isn’t going to allow you to do what the hell you want under national security provisions if it comes to that?
> You’re going to offer them a lot of money, citizenship, and exfiltration of their family to turn up at work, and threaten them with lifetime in supermax if they sabotage anything.
This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. You can't operate a fab based on coercion. It requires positive relationships. There are simply too many people involved doing things that the would-be coercers don't understand.
The idea that an entire TSMC fab is going to commit treason en mass is about as believable as thinking that NASA faked the moon landings and covered it up en mass. Large groups of people don't behave the same way as small groups of people.
If the US wants a fab, just give Intel money to build one. Trying to steal one from TSMC is a nonsensical plan. At least Intel would know how to operate their own fab.
> If you don’t think the US security apparatus will come up with a reasonable plan for doing just that within 2 months of it opening, I don’t think you’re thinking hard enough about this.
The current US security apparatus is led by highly incompetent and corrupt people willing to sell the country down the river, so I would not count on them coming up with a plan, much less a reasonable plan, for anything.
> If you don’t think the US security apparatus will come up with a reasonable plan
Have you seen the US security apparatus's track record at coming up with reasonable plans for what happens after the military victory? See Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
More so a damage control move. In the eventuality Taiwan, and its factually on Chinese land production sites get affected, it won't affect as much the supply chain as it otherwise would.
The U.S and Japan indeed will have less incentive to defend the sovereignty of Taiwan, but other reasons remain to ensure the statu quo remains. Purely geopolitical, not just industrial.
I would argue the chips don't even matter (important, but not as a reason for defending Taiwan.) It's a strategically important location that is a stone's throw from Japanese islands. If Japan feels the need, then nukes may be on the table. If that were to happen, S. Korea may not be far behind. And the cycle spirals.
America selectively gets into conflicts worldwide to deter China from invading China
As soon as we get the right semiconductor supply chain stateside can switch up on that island and reach parity with the rest of the world’s contribution to that issue: none.
