(Photo via TSMC)
By John Liu, Paul Mozur | New York Times
Mark Liu, chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, said it would be difficult to replicate what the company has built in Taiwan.Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which is manufacturing the world’s most advanced microchips, conducts business on the island of Taiwan, dead center in one of the most geopolitically volatile places on the planet.
That makes people in Washington very nervous. TSMC dominates the semiconductor industry; it’s a company that the United States can’t do without, 80 miles off the coast of China.
The U.S. government has appropriated tens of billions of dollars to strengthen America’s own semiconductor sector and help fund TSMC’s nascent operations in the United States, far from China, which has never renounced the use of force to absorb Taiwan.
But TSMC has invested billions of its own over nearly four decades growing deep roots in Taiwan. There, it employs a small army of engineers, research and development scientists, technicians and production workers in the exquisitely complex task of producing chips, etching electronic pathways smaller than a cell on plates of silicon.
It would be exceedingly difficult to replicate what TSMC has built in Taiwan, said Mark Liu, chairman of TSMC. Developing and producing the company’s most cutting-edge chips at a rapid pace requires a huge effort, he said, as many as 3,000 research scientists for one generation of the technology.
“We cannot put it anyplace else,” he said.
