[tachyonbeam]

Yeah. It's not just supply chain, it's also national security.

> I think the leadership at TSMC is being a little naive. Alternatively, they may know very well what's going on here and they are being willfully obtuse to paint as bright a picture as possible of their long-term prospects.

It could be two things:

1. Some arrogance, "hah, this is harder than you think"

2. They're trying to discourage the competition because they know it will hurt their bottom line.

Even if they only lost 10% of their revenue, that can still hurt a lot. They could go from being a growing business to stagnating or shrinking.

[gpm]

3. They're trying to discourage competition, because competition impacts their (Taiwan's) national security.

I don't think TMSC is naive about the geopolitical importance that they have to Taiwan.

[tachyonbeam]

I was thinking about that recently. China can't realistically invade (or intimidate/sanction) Taiwan as long as they are dependent on TSMC, because of those semiconductor manufacturing plants went down, it could be a global economic disaster, and China would be one of the most heavily impacted, given the proportion of everyone's electronics they manufacture.

[dirtyid]

China can't realistically invade TW until it can take on USN 10-15 years from now after more build up / military modernization anyway. Happenstance of TSMC dominance is IMO blessing in this regard, buys PRC 10+ years of military and semi catchup time. There's going to be theatrics and political posturing in the interim by US/CN/TW, but ultimately TSMC buying TW time is buying CN time to close gap with US.