[svnt]

The author seems to have missed that TSMC previously failed to transplant TSMC culture into the USA. In nearly thirty years they probably realized they need more than just semiconductor expertise transfer — they need a transfusion of Taiwanese culture.

One way to do that is to send an entire employee base from Taiwan, but then how do you maintain or integrate in the US? Splitting the employee base in half seems more likely to succeed, probably with process/engineering roles predominantly Taiwanese and more external-facing roles skewing American.

[AlbertCory]

There are lots of Japanese and Chinese companies with substantial presences in the US. TSMC probably realizes it's a learning process and they need to get on with it.

[svnt]

My experience with those (and German companies) is that it tends to be using the US employees as an innovation hub, which in practice means we get the projects that are more likely to fail, because that is less culturally embarrassing here.

This approach can’t work with advanced semiconductor manufacturing for a number of reasons but primarily the same factors that drove Intel’s adoption of “Copy Exactly!”