[mamon]

This mitigates only half of the problem - yes, China won't be able to use the factory for themselves, but if you take a closer look at the list of the largest TSMC customers from the article those are mostly American companies. Destroying TSMC factory would hurt the US disproportionately more than it would China. Which might matter in the current China-US trade war.

Also "planting bombs at the factory" scenario is one of the reasons why all armies in the world have spies and special forces - you send your special ops soldiers before your main attack to take control of the facility and prevent initiating the self-destruction protocol. I'm not saying it always works, but China can take a calculated risk here, since they win either way.

[wwtrv]

And what would China win exactly? Even if they somehow miraculously manage to keep TSMC up and running they would not be able to export anything produced there to other countries and permanently loose access to all western IP.

And the sanctions from US and other countries would massively outweigh any perceived economic benefits from invading Taiwan.

[lazide]

Any scenario where China invades Taiwan, global sanctions and embargoes are already happening. Blowing up the wests high end chip fab capacity for a minimum of 2-3 years at that point is a bonus.

[Traster]

If China attacks Taiwan, those American customers are going to lose TSMC as a supplier either way.