[ExI] Chip War

[Adrian Tymes]

What, other than ASML's factories (that could be placed anywhere
willing and able to pay, other than Russia or China), is needed to
make chips that Taiwan has in more abundance than other places, in
particular than the US?

On Sat, Oct 18, 2025 at 7:01 AM John Clark via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> I highly recommend the 2022 book "Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology" by Chris Miller. It clearly explains why the small island of Taiwan, only 100 miles off the coast of mainland China, is vital to the world's economy, it's because TSMC's chip fabrication plants are there and they use hyper advanced hyper precise machine tools manufactured by the Dutch company ASML, and Taiwan is the only place in the world capable of mass producing chips at the cutting edge of technology such as those that fuel the current AI revolution, and that Apple uses in their phones. Thanks to Nvidia (the most valuable company in the world) the US still designs the world's most advanced chips, but it no longer manufactures them, by contrast no company in Taiwan designs chips, they just manufacture them. INTEL once prided itself on its mastery of the chip manufacturing process but in recent years it has fallen far behind and is currently incapable of making the advanced chips that TSMC can, and Micron, the only other company that makes chips on US soil, only makes commodity memory chips that were never on the cutting edge of technology.
>
> Miller points out that it's dangerous to tie the national security of the US to the fate of an island that mainland China insists they own. Just one of TSMC's factories, FAB #18, cost well over $25 billion and in 2022 was the most expensive factory that human beings have ever made, and just one drone armed with a few hundred pounds of conventional explosives could disrupt all the very delicate equipment in it and send the entire world into a deep recession. China spends far more money importing foreign made chips than it does importing oil and is way behind Taiwan, and even the US, in its domestic chip manufacturing capabilities. And Russia is way behind China. Since ASML is not allowed to sell any of their most advanced chip making equipment to China, Miller estimates it would be a decade and cost several trillion dollars to reach the level Taiwan is currently at, but TSMC is not standing still and is spending furiously on R&D, so after a decade China still wouldn't be on the cutting edge. China knows all this of course, that's why in recent days it's been regarding Taiwan with envious eyes and is slowly and surely drawing their plans against it.
>
> John K Clark
>
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