Their first fab in Arizona is completed and ramping production and the second one's structure is in place so it's probably not likely to be vaporware, but they are probably going to be hyping up what they already have done and started.
Might be a silly question but considering the tensions between US and EU right now... What would happen to all these deals if ASML was was not allowed to sell their machines to US companies? I don't know enough to even speculate on these wild scenarios
I think that won't happen as ASML relies on a bunch of patents. Now I don't think American patents are valid abroad anyways. So probably shouldn't be a concern.
This is me halfremembering recent comment on HN. It's structured so that the ip is owned by an American company that licenses to ASML or something like that.
I think people give too much importance to being 1-2 generation ahead. Even if TSMC dies(slowly), it won't affect the world too much if Samsung continues to stay one generation behind with Intel likely joining them.
TSMC has a massive 65% of the market. There is no way Samsung or any other player can plug that whole in terms of sheer capacity before a quite long investment cycle.
Fearmongering the American public into believing that it would happen is how Trump leveraged this deal, and how he spins it to his base that he wins yet another negotiation to make America stronger. Same playbook as the Apple and OpenAI/Oracle "investment" announcements.
Exactly. China has held this position for a long time. Chip plant manufacturing is a recent development. China will eventually catch up with their own manufacturing in a decade or so. They don't care about the immediate short-term - they think in decades.
Even if the desire to absorb Taiwan is ideological, they would certainly also understand the severe practical implications of losing access to their chip production.
This was my first thought when I heard about this. If Taiwan ever looks like it's going to fall, I think that there's going to be a massive concerted effort to extract all the talent and production equipment over to America so that it's not in China's hands.
Sure, TSMC would want to do that to salvage what they can. I wonder if the Taiwanese government is as keen on that arrangement though; TSMC plants are their biggest bargaining chip, and Trump has upending the entire world order mere weeks into his term.
The US has not been a good partner to Taiwan, truth be told. If you browse social media that are popular among the Taiwanese, you'll discover that there is quite a bit of resentment towards the US, because they see the US as coercing them into transferring their much-needed human and intellectual capital in world-class semicon technology. (E.g. ~50% of the staff now working at the Arizona fab are TSMC engineers who moved from Taiwan, because American workers allegedly do not have the requisite skills or work ethic.) And yet the US is not willing to reciprocate by transferring its military technology.
I'm sure Trump's disastrous meeting with Zelenskyy has greatly damaged confidence among the Taiwanese. At some point more and more Taiwanese might just decide that a mob boss who speaks their language is better than a mob boss who doesn't.
I would not be surprised if this was in the calculation. TSMC US is currently moving quite a bit faster and ahead of what TSMC originally planned. There is a possibility that TSMC US will only be 1 year behind in node development. With the added capacity, it will accelerate transition of Qualcomm, Broadcom, Nvidia, AMD etc to Fab on US soil.
Once that is even partly done. There is no reason Trump will send US troops to defend Taiwan.
Chips are but a tiny reason the US wants to maintain the independence and integrity of Taiwan. (The same can likely sadly be said of their democracy, given the US stance on Ukraine.)
Taiwanese independence is primarily about containing China's naval power projection and their ability to keep unimpeded shipping lanes open during times of war.
China can currently be easily blockaded, and within a few weeks of such blockades, their supplies of food and energy will be put under tremendous strain. That's why it's so important to the US Navy that China does not obtain Taiwan.
Fighting a war with a superpower that has that kind of Achilles heel is much easier.
It’s a nice line to say the US cares about democracies but I think history has shown that geopolitics trumps form of government every time. The US allies itself with dictatorships when it is expedient and overthrows democracies when it is expedient.
You are right that Taiwan makes it harder for China to project its navy, but chips are by far more important now. Building fabs in the US means we don’t have to defend Taiwan, because it’s looking less and less possible.
Also, China has a huge internal border, including a shared border with Russia. Even with a total naval blockade it would only increase food and energy costs. And sanctions won’t work, they didn’t even work with Russia and China is the number 1 trade partner globally.
What do you think it can be blockaded with? Submarines... barely. Carriers are sitting ducks these days, especially since China already has an equivalent of Russian Onix missiles and launch platforms. Subs won't cover the land corridor, and they will get all they need across the Russian border if it comes to that.
China will eventually get Taiwan without firing a shot. Pretending that the US can defend an island next to a Chinese border is a pipe dream.
The Taiwan Strait is around 180 KM long, UK to France is around 30 to 40 KM in comparison. That same strait is also not safe to traverse except for two periods each year, so if they are going to invade we will know beforehand.
China needs to win this quickly, because any sort of kinetic war is going to put freeze the global economy and likely cause a mass recession, while the USA (& India) can blockade China's supply and oil chains from the Middle East beyond their force projection. Russian-Chinese infrastructure in Siberia isn't well developed and could also easily destroyed with strategic weapons from Alaska. Not to mention the sheer logistics of sending and maintaining millions of men across the strait. One missile and those troops sink into the ocean.
Trying to do a blockade on Taiwan premature isn't a good idea either, because it's conversely giving the USA the first move to organize it's forces out of harm's way, and basically turns a signficant chunk of the PLAN into sitting ducks out at the sea. Most Chinese victories are predicated on the China quickly wiping out US assets in Japan, Korea and Guam, if they don't manage to do that and fail to achieve air superiority, their troop carriers are going to sitting ducks for drones and fighters in the air.
You are missing one thing: any weapons flying into China will result in stuff exploding in New York and Washington. US carriers will be sunk, and there is no appetite in the US for either scenario.
Anyway, the whole thing won't require a single shot. The island and the mainland have close economic ties; people that determine taiwanese policy are heavily invested in China. All the tough words that are being said are for public consumption.
A regional conflict over Taiwan is highly unlikely to result in ICBMs headed for NYC and DC, because China knows that’s effectively the end of modern China. And sinking carriers would also be a very risky escalation given the ability of the US and other allies to retaliate.
I do think you’re right that Taiwan will ultimately lose without much warfare, because Trump is a world-class coward and rolls over for every autocrat who looks in his direction.
Strikes by the US inside China are highly unlikely for the same reason.
As for Trump, he is simply pragmatic. Taiwan is indefensible from the military standpoint. I would not count on allies too much, because Europe's remaining 1 1/2 soldiers cannot make any difference, and the UK can barely get its ships out of the harbor.
Anyway, all of this is just a show.
Strikes by the US on Chinese military facilities are vastly more likely than ICBM strikes against civilian population centers on the other side of the world, for obvious reasons.
China currently would have a serious bad time economically, cut off from intl trade. So there are options in addition to military - if there was a will. The rest of the world would have a hard time without China intl trade but probably far more survivable.
And blockade options go both ways: China could blockade Taiwan? They have more and more attack submarines and anti-aircraft missiles - which may be good enough.
Unfortunately I have to agreed. Protection rackets seem to be pretty much the defining activity when Trump is allowed to run the show, but I doubt appeasement in itself is really going to buy Taiwan anything.
What's to stop him from taking the bribes and then just fabricating some of his trademark bullshit about how the Taiwanese "have been very unfair" and Xi's people were actually totally in the right all along.
Nope. The US is doing all it can to become irrelevant geopolitically in Europe, that's not to start a war with China with a very uncertain outcome. Economic ties is (was) the really last bastion that would have motivated the US to intervene.
Are you willing to get drafted and fight to defend Taiwan and whatever comes as a result of that? Are you willing to die for Taiwan, or have your kids die for Taiwan? Honest question.
that's I suppose the risk one is willing to take when enrolling into the army?.. You're raising though a very good point, the US army is really large and it's not clear anymore what its purpose is anymore (not against Russia anymore, not against China soon/anymore, then what for?)
Deploying the US army on US soil against US citizens would essentially be the end of the country. Whatever the outcome is would be a fundamentally different place. The military is an effective mechanism for pacifying the masses through employment.
I don't necessarily believe maintaining a ludicrously strong military for the purposes of defending our homeland is a bad idea. Maybe I'm just being silly, but like, why would you not want the strongest military you could possibly muster to defend your nation?
Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong? But I don't think so.
I'm hesitant to even say this because it sounds so callous and naive, so with apologies in advance: how would one maintain a superior military if that military isn't involved in any aspect of combat for long stretches of time? To use a sports analogy, could you build a Super Bowl capable (American) football team if none of the players or coaches have done more than watch football on TV and played lots of flag football scrimmages amongst themselves?
(I'm wondering about this after reading today's NYT article about the escalating use of drone warfare in Ukraine.)
Between WWI and WWII, the US didn't get in any "hot practice". (Which is what I think you're talking about?) That didn't stop us from learning what we needed to know. Nor did it stop us from fielding a formidable military. The new technologies at the time were wielded by us to deadly effect. Carriers and tanks in particular. We didn't just sit around and get really good at digging trenches and moving dreadnoughts around.
The same will happen here. I guarantee you, the American military will be among the best in the world at employing the services of satellites, autonomous ordinance and surveillance, and cyber offensives.
You have concerns about our facility with drones? Be assured, we'll be able to work out how to create nightmarish swarms just as well as Europeans or Chinese can. We'll have the same facility with working with countermeasures and mitigating countermeasures as well.
> That didn't stop us from learning what we needed to know.
Actually, it did. At the beginning of its intervention, US weaponry and tactics were way below their European counterparts, even in nuclear research. The difference was made through sheer power of scale and speed of adaptation, not pre-war innovation.
In the same way, the US military is currently as good as it is precisely because it sees significant deployments very frequently (Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq), which means they learn hard lessons and develop technologies solving real problems, at a rate that no other military can match.
We haven’t had a draft in decades, what makes you bring it up now? Are you implying that only people serving in the military should have a say in foreign policy?
Because if we go to war with China, they have a lot more people to throw at us than we have active in the military. Any slightly protracted war will require a draft. I'm sure you filled out your draft card when you turned 18 like I did, even when there was no draft. That's so if and when they needed to reinstate it, it would pick up almost seamlessly where it left off.
>Are you implying that only people serving in the military should have a say in foreign policy?
No, I'm implying before people rah rah to defend Taiwan, they actually understand what that means; it probably won't mean sending only active duty and reserves after a year or two and that a draft will most likely occur.
Naval warfare is more about hardware than manpower. American casualties in the Pacific Theater of WW2 were only ~100k dead and ~200k wounded.
The US alone would lose in that as well, because its shipbuilding capacity is minimal. But together with South Korea and Japan, it could compete against China on a level ground.
China has the ability to strike the American heartland, including naval production, in ways Japan did not.
We’re also at risk of losing strategic depth: how many more years of provocations from Washington do you think it would take a South American, Mexican or the Caribbean country to start letting Chinese drones, ships and missiles on their territory? (How confident are you in our intelligence community that this hasn’t already happened?)
I do hope it wouldn’t come to that, but I also don’t think we can afford to immediately capitulate to any state with more manpower out of fear and still consider ourselves to be a world power.
If China has us completely militarily outmatched then of course we can’t afford to provoke them, but it’s not my sense that we’re ready to accept that currently.
I agree. What's the point of a massive military if you can't scare people with it? All I'm saying is we need to be careful what we wish for and understand what we are getting into. If congress thinks the population is itching to go to war, they might just get us into one (again).
Like you said, we haven't had a draft in decades. People might think we won't ever have one, and those people would be mistaken.
I’m guessing you haven’t served in the military, and aren’t really familiar with the projections of how a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is likely to unfold.
The phrasing of your question makes it sound like you clearly do not think Taiwan is worth defending. Perhaps a more interesting question would be - where is the line for you to consider a war is worth fighting for? Is it only when your country is being attacked and you need to defend it? If so, take a guess what WW1 and WW2 would have looked like if everyone had that opinion.
You didn't answer the question. It's easy to send other people's kids to war (see Iraq, Afghanistan). It's a different problem when you have your own skin in the game.
>If so, take a guess what WW1 and WW2 would have looked like if everyone had that opinion.
WWI Would have been merely a local conflict between Austria and Serbia. WWII would have been about the same as it was historically, if it happened at all, see previous answer on WWI.
As an aside and ironically, both Wilson and FDR campaigned on not getting us into WWI and WWII.
I suspect there are not many outside your own acquaintances willing to have their children drafted to defend Taiwan.
Just being realistic. Americans were committed to these things because leadership committed us to these things and would make it illegal for us to get out of it. Given an actual choice, not many Americans would have willingly gone to, say, Vietnam. Maybe a few brainwashed anti-communists, but the average American thought, "Hey, not my circus, not my monkeys." I suspect even fewer would be willing to go fight for Taiwan.
The average American's attitude is, "Call me when they attack Hawaii." Until that point, most genuinely don't care. That's why Trump's current moves in Europe will be applauded by his base. Because people have severely overestimated the desire of the American every-man and -woman to defend foreign nations.
You can't give people a choice. If given a choice, they'll always say no.
You either fight far away or you fight at home. The choice to fight though is not yours to make. Its the choice of the defectors of law, of Despots and murderers. You can fight them today, while they rob you with a stick or tomorrow, when they have a gun. But fight you must.
That's just the sort of macho thinking that has caused so many military endeavors to fail throughout history. Maybe the politics is about soundbites like that one? I don't know? I'm not a politician. But the actual prosecution of a military conflict is about outcomes. Not soundbites.
Will there be a good outcome or not?
I mean, if it makes you feel any better, you can think of it this way. Our past has taught us that, without question, it is best to fight far away, but only after an enemy has been weakened by others.
I know how that sounds to many non-US citizens. But I'm just being honest about how the thinking in America has developed historically.
It looks like the war in Ukraine should be beneficial to the United States. We send some surplus equipment and ramp up ammo production (jobs!) while weakening a prominent geopolitical adversary all without spilling American blood.
Letting Ukraine fall will embolden Russia who will continue their march across Europe until it is necessary to spill American blood.
Similarly we may not have a choice in Taiwan. Japan and The Philippines at least aren’t keen to have an emboldened imperialist China in their backyards. If they intervene US aid at least will be in our best interest.
Isolationism is not a guaranteed ideal strategy in all situations. Looking only at boondoggles like Vietnam, Iraq 2, and Afghanistan doesn’t mean all US intervention is harmful to the national interest.
> Some folks are born made to wave the flag - Hoo, they're red, white and blue. And when the band plays "Hail to the chief", Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord
After seeing people convinced to send their children to the Middle East for more nebulous reasons, I wouldn't be surprised if a significant portion of the country can be found willing.
This comes so often in HN it is wild. Risking WW3 and killing millions just because Samsung is 2 years behind TSMC. To save a year we would set world decades or centuries back.
I think that the deterrent is Taiwan destroying all their fabs before the Chinese get to them. This would severely affect the _entire_ world therefore there are strong incentives to keep Taiwan independent.
The US was defending Taiwan against China long before TSMC was founded. If anything I'd worry it goes the opposite way. In the status quo, if the Chinese military can prevent TSMC from operating or prevent their products from being exported, wouldn't the US almost have to capitulate in exchange for a chips deal?
That's the old way of thinking -- they're trying to do just that across the government and without some enforcement mechanism to make them send the checks, the practical result is that the President can indeed cancel pieces of legislation via impoundment.
Example 3 - CHIPS act would have had funding withheld if a Federal Court hadn't stepped in, but it's unclear what enforcement mechanism can force the funding to resume: https://archive.is/BxjHw
Sure, but a lot of people at NIST who were in charge of implementing the CHIPS act have been fired. He definitely seems to be doing all he can to sabotage the CHIPS act without needing any congressional action.
He sure seems to be able to just terminate legislation signed into law. He already did it with USAID, and is in the process of doing it to many other departments.
Yeah, kids starving and dying of cholera.. fuck em /s
> The Inspector General also warned that $489 million in humanitarian food aid was at risk of spoiling due to staff furloughs and unclear guidance. The Office of Presidential Personnel fired the Inspector General the next day, despite a law requiring 30 days notice to Congress before firing an Inspector General.
Since we are talking about concrete examples, how about $70,000 for transgender comic in Peru? $47,000 for a trans opera in Colombia? I don't mind USAID if (1) US citizen are taken care of (Chicago is full of homeless. There are families that are barely getting by, trying to pay medical expenses), and (2) Waste like the ones above is eliminated. Until then... yeah, fuck it. Get rid of clowns that are wasting the tax dollars.
The correct way for the government to reel in USAID would be for congress to give them less funding and to tell them specifically what they want funded. Regardless if it offends you personally, those are all lawful uses of the money and the only illegal thing that's happened here is the funding being stopped by the President.
First, I would not trust the current USAID disbursement personnel not to piss the money into the wind. I want them gone.
And it's not a question of being offended personally - these are just ridiculous expenses that cannot possibly be justified. But I am indeed offended that the amount 4x of my real estate taxes that I can barely scrape off the bottom of a barrel is being wasted on some opera abroad. If you are wondering why people vote for Trump, this is one of those reasons.
Regarding legality of funding being stopped by the President, I am not a lawyer (and I am guessing neither are you), so I am not going to take your legal opinion on this and will wait for the courts to issue the final ruling.
The fact that there’s a specific law called the Impoundment Control Act where the specific actions Trump is trying were made illegal should give you a hint to which way the court cases are going to go..
Those numbers are for the wrong line items, and the WH press secretary was wrong about the source of those funds. Both of those were out of the state department budget, which (putting aside the present murky status) did not oversee USAID at the time.
What can I say... if you are correct about this (there are a lot of claims from both sides but no proofs), I hope DOGE gets its hands on the State Department, too. We have enough worthy causes to take care of inside the US.
But DOGE has been trying to do effectively that for the past month, and has been distressingly successful at it. (For all that conservatives whined about the existence of an unaccountable deep state override elected officials making laws, that's basically an accurate description of DOGE.)
Probably because Europe is not threatening them behind the scenes and perhaps offering money as well.
Diversifying chip manufacturing more globally is pretty crucial to maintaining the world order though. Sadly, having a fab in the US under the current administration is not helpful to the west in general. Getting TSMC or building an alternative to TSMC in Europe, UK, Canada, Australia, would be very smart.
I believe a lot of the machines TSMC depends on are even produced in Europe, so there should be room to make some deal!
Seems your average semiconductor foundry needs around 100MW[1] to 200MW[2] of electrical power to operate. The main consumption is down to refrigeration chillers[3].
Average US house uses about 12600kWh per year[4], or 1.44kW average across a year. So that means one foundry takes about what 70k to 140k houses would take.
It went up considerably because of nordic exports to the rest of Europe. They are producing enough for themselves, but not if they have to share.
It's the same reason why US gas prices are somewhat on the high side lately - a lot of it is exported to Europe, and the price differential is large enough to make this worth the trouble.
You realize that the US buys energy from Canada right? The US has no advantage on energy. Even in Europe, building more power capacity is simply a matter of wanting to.
Right. I do. The US buys a lot of it, and it is cheap.
As for Europe, you are right, partially it's a matter of a mindset, however there are objective reasons for expensive energy. France's access to cheap uranium is almost gone. Europe refuses to sign long-term russian gas delivery contracts and are buying spot which costs arm and leg (whatever is left of it). German power plants are shuttered. LNG imported from the US is very expensive.
Some German CEOs (I think Volkswagen if I recall correctly) said recently that Germany offers no competitive advantage these days. I agree.
Where do you think manufacturing will go? Energy is everything.
However hard it is, the decline of the US is going to force Europe and the rest of the western countries to build out replacements for US labour and goods. The US is simply not a reliable trading partner nor ally under the new administration. Energy will be built.
The US and European alliance was a marriage of convenience. One of the results of Ukrainian conflict was manufacturing moving from Europe to the US.
Energy has to be built from something, and Europe does not have it.
Europe has sun and wind. In the time it would take the US to build one nuclear plant Europe can build over 10x as much renewable capacity, for 1/10th the cost. As much as I'm pro environmental protection, the reality is that a lot of places are preferring renewables because they are cheaper and faster to build than traditional power plants for the same energy outputs. Even Texas is building tons of renewables for this reason.
So yes, energy will be built in Europe and elsewhere.
One word: BS. Germany energy shortages were in the news early this year, and last year, and the year before then. See this, for example: https://www.power-technology.com/news/germany-wind-power-sho... Germany and its renewables is just a laughing stock at this point. One cannot run an industry on renewables, and they are finding this out. There was already some talk about restarting nuclear power plants.
With your optimism, they would have tackled this problem already.
Texas already paid its price for their lack of investment in traditional generation facilities.
Currently everything points in the direction that capitulation would be the outcome of China invading Taiwan, with political pressure to eject any democratically elected leader in Taiwan for the sake of "negotiations".
It was what this administration did in Afghanistan, it's doing in Ukraine, and nothing tells us it will be different with Taiwan.
No, secretary of commerce Lutnick said that the $65 billion deal was Biden's and was subsidized by the US ($6 billion).
He then bragged that Trump extorted TSMC using tariffs and forced TSMC to invest another $100 billion to avoid tariffs.
The US is using tariffs to have other nations build "their" industry. After that work is done, these nations will be ready to become new theaters for US proxy wars.
"America um under the Biden Administration uh tsmc received a $6 billion Grant and that encouraged them to build 65 billion dollar so America gave tsmc 10% of the money to build here and now you're seeing the power of Donald Trump's presidency because tsmc the greatest manufacturer of chips in the world is coming to America with a hundred billion dollar investment and of course that is backed by the fact that they can come here because they can avoid paying tariffs so the idea is come to America build greatness in America."
TSMC never pays tariffs anyways, whomever did the importing does so companies like Apple, GM, Tesla, etc.
An announced deal really should be worthless politically, we've all seen Foxconn or Apple announce big investments during Trump's first presidency for them to just walk it back later.
TSMC has followed through already in Arizona where they are actually producing. The CHIPS act has been fairly successful, and I know for a fact that there are other locations already being planned based on the Act. Granted, this administration could just decide to ignore all that, but I gather instead they will just take credit for something the previous administration did.
Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/tech/trump-chip-maker-tsmc-expected-to-a...
https://archive.is/fW91i
Thank you!
What are the chances that this ends up like the Wisconsin Foxconn deal? Is there anything actually driving a follow through on investment?
Their first fab in Arizona is completed and ramping production and the second one's structure is in place so it's probably not likely to be vaporware, but they are probably going to be hyping up what they already have done and started.
I am a bit skeptical about all the announcements. Are companies really investing, or just making announcements? I wish it were the latter!
I think (hope) you mean the former :-)
Might be a silly question but considering the tensions between US and EU right now... What would happen to all these deals if ASML was was not allowed to sell their machines to US companies? I don't know enough to even speculate on these wild scenarios
I think that won't happen as ASML relies on a bunch of patents. Now I don't think American patents are valid abroad anyways. So probably shouldn't be a concern.
This is me halfremembering recent comment on HN. It's structured so that the ip is owned by an American company that licenses to ASML or something like that.
Dude if Europe is stopping ASML from selling to the US Europe isn't going to be enforcing patent laws for the US.
I think people give too much importance to being 1-2 generation ahead. Even if TSMC dies(slowly), it won't affect the world too much if Samsung continues to stay one generation behind with Intel likely joining them.
TSMC has a massive 65% of the market. There is no way Samsung or any other player can plug that whole in terms of sheer capacity before a quite long investment cycle.
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I would be cautious. With a top notch chip factory there is no need to defend Taiwan against China.
Doubtful that would ever happen. And all sides know it.
Fearmongering the American public into believing that it would happen is how Trump leveraged this deal, and how he spins it to his base that he wins yet another negotiation to make America stronger. Same playbook as the Apple and OpenAI/Oracle "investment" announcements.
OTOH, If they have production outside of Taiwan, then they can more credibly threaten to destroy the Taiwanese fabs if China invades.
> they can more credibly threaten to destroy the Taiwanese fabs if China invades
China's interest in Taiwan is ideological. It is not at all determined by whether the Taiwanese destroy their own fabs in the event of an invasion.
Exactly. China has held this position for a long time. Chip plant manufacturing is a recent development. China will eventually catch up with their own manufacturing in a decade or so. They don't care about the immediate short-term - they think in decades.
Even if the desire to absorb Taiwan is ideological, they would certainly also understand the severe practical implications of losing access to their chip production.
This was my first thought when I heard about this. If Taiwan ever looks like it's going to fall, I think that there's going to be a massive concerted effort to extract all the talent and production equipment over to America so that it's not in China's hands.
Sure, TSMC would want to do that to salvage what they can. I wonder if the Taiwanese government is as keen on that arrangement though; TSMC plants are their biggest bargaining chip, and Trump has upending the entire world order mere weeks into his term.
But with an US fab that’s a threat mainly to China, without it’s global.
One new fab - even if full size - cannot take on anywhere near world needs - even ex-China. So different threat, but yes.
Exactly. Its the only card Taiwan holds once its gone America will never care about them
These comments just ignore history. Tsmc wasn't even founded until 1987, let alone dominant. US commitments are from WW2.
So what? USA has been a close ally of Canada for over a century, and they are throwing that out the window. They can throw Taiwan out the window too.
A big difference with Taiwan vs Ukraine is that the US lets Taiwan purchase much more top of the line equipment.
Taiwan is still not allowed to buy F35 fighters. And the weapons they are allowed to buy from the US are delivered late and of poor quality:
Taiwan Is Getting Its U.S. Weaponry—but Years Behind Schedule: https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/taiwan-is-getting-its-u-s-wea...
U.S. delivered "wet and moldy body armor" to Taiwan, Pentagon watchdog says: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-wet-moldy-body-armor-to-tai...
The US has not been a good partner to Taiwan, truth be told. If you browse social media that are popular among the Taiwanese, you'll discover that there is quite a bit of resentment towards the US, because they see the US as coercing them into transferring their much-needed human and intellectual capital in world-class semicon technology. (E.g. ~50% of the staff now working at the Arizona fab are TSMC engineers who moved from Taiwan, because American workers allegedly do not have the requisite skills or work ethic.) And yet the US is not willing to reciprocate by transferring its military technology.
I'm sure Trump's disastrous meeting with Zelenskyy has greatly damaged confidence among the Taiwanese. At some point more and more Taiwanese might just decide that a mob boss who speaks their language is better than a mob boss who doesn't.
I would not be surprised if this was in the calculation. TSMC US is currently moving quite a bit faster and ahead of what TSMC originally planned. There is a possibility that TSMC US will only be 1 year behind in node development. With the added capacity, it will accelerate transition of Qualcomm, Broadcom, Nvidia, AMD etc to Fab on US soil.
Once that is even partly done. There is no reason Trump will send US troops to defend Taiwan.
I would not assume that TSMC leadership is 100% aligned with the national interests of Taiwan as a country.
The horse already said that he will not defend Taiwan.
Chips are but a tiny reason the US wants to maintain the independence and integrity of Taiwan. (The same can likely sadly be said of their democracy, given the US stance on Ukraine.)
Taiwanese independence is primarily about containing China's naval power projection and their ability to keep unimpeded shipping lanes open during times of war.
China can currently be easily blockaded, and within a few weeks of such blockades, their supplies of food and energy will be put under tremendous strain. That's why it's so important to the US Navy that China does not obtain Taiwan.
Fighting a war with a superpower that has that kind of Achilles heel is much easier.
It’s a nice line to say the US cares about democracies but I think history has shown that geopolitics trumps form of government every time. The US allies itself with dictatorships when it is expedient and overthrows democracies when it is expedient.
You are right that Taiwan makes it harder for China to project its navy, but chips are by far more important now. Building fabs in the US means we don’t have to defend Taiwan, because it’s looking less and less possible.
Also, China has a huge internal border, including a shared border with Russia. Even with a total naval blockade it would only increase food and energy costs. And sanctions won’t work, they didn’t even work with Russia and China is the number 1 trade partner globally.
What do you think it can be blockaded with? Submarines... barely. Carriers are sitting ducks these days, especially since China already has an equivalent of Russian Onix missiles and launch platforms. Subs won't cover the land corridor, and they will get all they need across the Russian border if it comes to that.
China will eventually get Taiwan without firing a shot. Pretending that the US can defend an island next to a Chinese border is a pipe dream.
The Taiwan Strait is around 180 KM long, UK to France is around 30 to 40 KM in comparison. That same strait is also not safe to traverse except for two periods each year, so if they are going to invade we will know beforehand.
China needs to win this quickly, because any sort of kinetic war is going to put freeze the global economy and likely cause a mass recession, while the USA (& India) can blockade China's supply and oil chains from the Middle East beyond their force projection. Russian-Chinese infrastructure in Siberia isn't well developed and could also easily destroyed with strategic weapons from Alaska. Not to mention the sheer logistics of sending and maintaining millions of men across the strait. One missile and those troops sink into the ocean.
Trying to do a blockade on Taiwan premature isn't a good idea either, because it's conversely giving the USA the first move to organize it's forces out of harm's way, and basically turns a signficant chunk of the PLAN into sitting ducks out at the sea. Most Chinese victories are predicated on the China quickly wiping out US assets in Japan, Korea and Guam, if they don't manage to do that and fail to achieve air superiority, their troop carriers are going to sitting ducks for drones and fighters in the air.
You are missing one thing: any weapons flying into China will result in stuff exploding in New York and Washington. US carriers will be sunk, and there is no appetite in the US for either scenario.
Anyway, the whole thing won't require a single shot. The island and the mainland have close economic ties; people that determine taiwanese policy are heavily invested in China. All the tough words that are being said are for public consumption.
That’s not really how war works.
A regional conflict over Taiwan is highly unlikely to result in ICBMs headed for NYC and DC, because China knows that’s effectively the end of modern China. And sinking carriers would also be a very risky escalation given the ability of the US and other allies to retaliate.
I do think you’re right that Taiwan will ultimately lose without much warfare, because Trump is a world-class coward and rolls over for every autocrat who looks in his direction.
Strikes by the US inside China are highly unlikely for the same reason. As for Trump, he is simply pragmatic. Taiwan is indefensible from the military standpoint. I would not count on allies too much, because Europe's remaining 1 1/2 soldiers cannot make any difference, and the UK can barely get its ships out of the harbor. Anyway, all of this is just a show.
Strikes by the US on Chinese military facilities are vastly more likely than ICBM strikes against civilian population centers on the other side of the world, for obvious reasons.
China currently would have a serious bad time economically, cut off from intl trade. So there are options in addition to military - if there was a will. The rest of the world would have a hard time without China intl trade but probably far more survivable.
And blockade options go both ways: China could blockade Taiwan? They have more and more attack submarines and anti-aircraft missiles - which may be good enough.
Why couldn't that massive blockade just go around Taiwan is well?
Does anyone think the US would defend Taiwan at this point?
I think that ship has sailed under the current administration.
Unfortunately I have to agreed. Protection rackets seem to be pretty much the defining activity when Trump is allowed to run the show, but I doubt appeasement in itself is really going to buy Taiwan anything. What's to stop him from taking the bribes and then just fabricating some of his trademark bullshit about how the Taiwanese "have been very unfair" and Xi's people were actually totally in the right all along.
Nope. The US is doing all it can to become irrelevant geopolitically in Europe, that's not to start a war with China with a very uncertain outcome. Economic ties is (was) the really last bastion that would have motivated the US to intervene.
Are you willing to get drafted and fight to defend Taiwan and whatever comes as a result of that? Are you willing to die for Taiwan, or have your kids die for Taiwan? Honest question.
that's I suppose the risk one is willing to take when enrolling into the army?.. You're raising though a very good point, the US army is really large and it's not clear anymore what its purpose is anymore (not against Russia anymore, not against China soon/anymore, then what for?)
Against internal dissent and against the enemy of the day in the Western hemisphere (seems to be the plan).
Deploying the US army on US soil against US citizens would essentially be the end of the country. Whatever the outcome is would be a fundamentally different place. The military is an effective mechanism for pacifying the masses through employment.
Not trying to be flip or anything, but why can't it just be to defend the US? From anyone who may come.
Serious question.
>why can't it just be to defend the US?
It was that way for most of our existence (and empire building). The whole world police thing came after WWII.
And that wasn't a terrible idea.
I don't necessarily believe maintaining a ludicrously strong military for the purposes of defending our homeland is a bad idea. Maybe I'm just being silly, but like, why would you not want the strongest military you could possibly muster to defend your nation?
Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong? But I don't think so.
I'm hesitant to even say this because it sounds so callous and naive, so with apologies in advance: how would one maintain a superior military if that military isn't involved in any aspect of combat for long stretches of time? To use a sports analogy, could you build a Super Bowl capable (American) football team if none of the players or coaches have done more than watch football on TV and played lots of flag football scrimmages amongst themselves?
(I'm wondering about this after reading today's NYT article about the escalating use of drone warfare in Ukraine.)
Between WWI and WWII, the US didn't get in any "hot practice". (Which is what I think you're talking about?) That didn't stop us from learning what we needed to know. Nor did it stop us from fielding a formidable military. The new technologies at the time were wielded by us to deadly effect. Carriers and tanks in particular. We didn't just sit around and get really good at digging trenches and moving dreadnoughts around.
The same will happen here. I guarantee you, the American military will be among the best in the world at employing the services of satellites, autonomous ordinance and surveillance, and cyber offensives.
You have concerns about our facility with drones? Be assured, we'll be able to work out how to create nightmarish swarms just as well as Europeans or Chinese can. We'll have the same facility with working with countermeasures and mitigating countermeasures as well.
> That didn't stop us from learning what we needed to know.
Actually, it did. At the beginning of its intervention, US weaponry and tactics were way below their European counterparts, even in nuclear research. The difference was made through sheer power of scale and speed of adaptation, not pre-war innovation.
In the same way, the US military is currently as good as it is precisely because it sees significant deployments very frequently (Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq), which means they learn hard lessons and develop technologies solving real problems, at a rate that no other military can match.
This is just untrue.
But hey, if you believe it, my pointing out the flaws in the arguments is not likely to change your mind. So I’ll just politely disagree with you.
You have a good evening sir or ma’am.
We haven’t had a draft in decades, what makes you bring it up now? Are you implying that only people serving in the military should have a say in foreign policy?
Because if we go to war with China, they have a lot more people to throw at us than we have active in the military. Any slightly protracted war will require a draft. I'm sure you filled out your draft card when you turned 18 like I did, even when there was no draft. That's so if and when they needed to reinstate it, it would pick up almost seamlessly where it left off.
>Are you implying that only people serving in the military should have a say in foreign policy?
No, I'm implying before people rah rah to defend Taiwan, they actually understand what that means; it probably won't mean sending only active duty and reserves after a year or two and that a draft will most likely occur.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_global_manpower_fit_fo...
Even with a full, aggressive draft, we'll need allies who are also willing to draft their citizens.
Naval warfare is more about hardware than manpower. American casualties in the Pacific Theater of WW2 were only ~100k dead and ~200k wounded.
The US alone would lose in that as well, because its shipbuilding capacity is minimal. But together with South Korea and Japan, it could compete against China on a level ground.
China has the ability to strike the American heartland, including naval production, in ways Japan did not.
We’re also at risk of losing strategic depth: how many more years of provocations from Washington do you think it would take a South American, Mexican or the Caribbean country to start letting Chinese drones, ships and missiles on their territory? (How confident are you in our intelligence community that this hasn’t already happened?)
I do hope it wouldn’t come to that, but I also don’t think we can afford to immediately capitulate to any state with more manpower out of fear and still consider ourselves to be a world power.
If China has us completely militarily outmatched then of course we can’t afford to provoke them, but it’s not my sense that we’re ready to accept that currently.
I agree. What's the point of a massive military if you can't scare people with it? All I'm saying is we need to be careful what we wish for and understand what we are getting into. If congress thinks the population is itching to go to war, they might just get us into one (again).
Like you said, we haven't had a draft in decades. People might think we won't ever have one, and those people would be mistaken.
I’m guessing you haven’t served in the military, and aren’t really familiar with the projections of how a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is likely to unfold.
A draft is highly unlikely.
The phrasing of your question makes it sound like you clearly do not think Taiwan is worth defending. Perhaps a more interesting question would be - where is the line for you to consider a war is worth fighting for? Is it only when your country is being attacked and you need to defend it? If so, take a guess what WW1 and WW2 would have looked like if everyone had that opinion.
You didn't answer the question. It's easy to send other people's kids to war (see Iraq, Afghanistan). It's a different problem when you have your own skin in the game.
>If so, take a guess what WW1 and WW2 would have looked like if everyone had that opinion.
WWI Would have been merely a local conflict between Austria and Serbia. WWII would have been about the same as it was historically, if it happened at all, see previous answer on WWI.
As an aside and ironically, both Wilson and FDR campaigned on not getting us into WWI and WWII.
Yes, by now, yes.
I suspect there are not many outside your own acquaintances willing to have their children drafted to defend Taiwan.
Just being realistic. Americans were committed to these things because leadership committed us to these things and would make it illegal for us to get out of it. Given an actual choice, not many Americans would have willingly gone to, say, Vietnam. Maybe a few brainwashed anti-communists, but the average American thought, "Hey, not my circus, not my monkeys." I suspect even fewer would be willing to go fight for Taiwan.
The average American's attitude is, "Call me when they attack Hawaii." Until that point, most genuinely don't care. That's why Trump's current moves in Europe will be applauded by his base. Because people have severely overestimated the desire of the American every-man and -woman to defend foreign nations.
You can't give people a choice. If given a choice, they'll always say no.
You either fight far away or you fight at home. The choice to fight though is not yours to make. Its the choice of the defectors of law, of Despots and murderers. You can fight them today, while they rob you with a stick or tomorrow, when they have a gun. But fight you must.
Every country gets an army.
The only choice is whose.
You either fight far away or you fight at home.
That's just the sort of macho thinking that has caused so many military endeavors to fail throughout history. Maybe the politics is about soundbites like that one? I don't know? I'm not a politician. But the actual prosecution of a military conflict is about outcomes. Not soundbites.
Will there be a good outcome or not?
I mean, if it makes you feel any better, you can think of it this way. Our past has taught us that, without question, it is best to fight far away, but only after an enemy has been weakened by others.
I know how that sounds to many non-US citizens. But I'm just being honest about how the thinking in America has developed historically.
It looks like the war in Ukraine should be beneficial to the United States. We send some surplus equipment and ramp up ammo production (jobs!) while weakening a prominent geopolitical adversary all without spilling American blood.
Letting Ukraine fall will embolden Russia who will continue their march across Europe until it is necessary to spill American blood.
Similarly we may not have a choice in Taiwan. Japan and The Philippines at least aren’t keen to have an emboldened imperialist China in their backyards. If they intervene US aid at least will be in our best interest.
Isolationism is not a guaranteed ideal strategy in all situations. Looking only at boondoggles like Vietnam, Iraq 2, and Afghanistan doesn’t mean all US intervention is harmful to the national interest.
> Some folks are born made to wave the flag - Hoo, they're red, white and blue. And when the band plays "Hail to the chief", Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord
After seeing people convinced to send their children to the Middle East for more nebulous reasons, I wouldn't be surprised if a significant portion of the country can be found willing.
When you sign up for the military, if you know anything about history, you know that you will probably not be fighting on US soil.
Yes.
We should have the troops wear Apple uniforms instead of green camo fatigues. Gotta make the ultimate sacrifice for our tech overlords.
This comes so often in HN it is wild. Risking WW3 and killing millions just because Samsung is 2 years behind TSMC. To save a year we would set world decades or centuries back.
Another question is whether it is defendable at this point. It's not clear that China doesn't have military superiority over that area.
I think that the deterrent is Taiwan destroying all their fabs before the Chinese get to them. This would severely affect the _entire_ world therefore there are strong incentives to keep Taiwan independent.
The US was defending Taiwan against China long before TSMC was founded. If anything I'd worry it goes the opposite way. In the status quo, if the Chinese military can prevent TSMC from operating or prevent their products from being exported, wouldn't the US almost have to capitulate in exchange for a chips deal?
Capitulate? The US aren't going into a direct war against the PRC even if Taiwan is invaded.
The play is to create trouble to the PRC, to bar open access to Pacific and to control trade routes to Japan/Korea.
The US do not care about Taiwan beyond its "usefulness".
I don’t know what you mean. The PRC already has open access to the Pacific and trade routes to Japan and Korea.
I second this
Didn't Trump terminate the Chips act?
The president can’t just unilaterally cancel a piece of legislation already signed into law. But maybe he gets the new congress to repeal it.
That's the old way of thinking -- they're trying to do just that across the government and without some enforcement mechanism to make them send the checks, the practical result is that the President can indeed cancel pieces of legislation via impoundment.
Example 1 - Trying to take $20 billion from Citi: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5161849-inflat...
Example 2 - The pause preempting the defunding of USAID: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/reev...
Example 3 - CHIPS act would have had funding withheld if a Federal Court hadn't stepped in, but it's unclear what enforcement mechanism can force the funding to resume: https://archive.is/BxjHw
Sure, but a lot of people at NIST who were in charge of implementing the CHIPS act have been fired. He definitely seems to be doing all he can to sabotage the CHIPS act without needing any congressional action.
He sure seems to be able to just terminate legislation signed into law. He already did it with USAID, and is in the process of doing it to many other departments.
USAID is a waste of money. Good riddance.
Yeah, kids starving and dying of cholera.. fuck em /s
> The Inspector General also warned that $489 million in humanitarian food aid was at risk of spoiling due to staff furloughs and unclear guidance. The Office of Presidential Personnel fired the Inspector General the next day, despite a law requiring 30 days notice to Congress before firing an Inspector General.
If they're not American kids, it's not our problem. We have enough of our own problems that need fixing first.
Since we are talking about concrete examples, how about $70,000 for transgender comic in Peru? $47,000 for a trans opera in Colombia? I don't mind USAID if (1) US citizen are taken care of (Chicago is full of homeless. There are families that are barely getting by, trying to pay medical expenses), and (2) Waste like the ones above is eliminated. Until then... yeah, fuck it. Get rid of clowns that are wasting the tax dollars.
The correct way for the government to reel in USAID would be for congress to give them less funding and to tell them specifically what they want funded. Regardless if it offends you personally, those are all lawful uses of the money and the only illegal thing that's happened here is the funding being stopped by the President.
First, I would not trust the current USAID disbursement personnel not to piss the money into the wind. I want them gone. And it's not a question of being offended personally - these are just ridiculous expenses that cannot possibly be justified. But I am indeed offended that the amount 4x of my real estate taxes that I can barely scrape off the bottom of a barrel is being wasted on some opera abroad. If you are wondering why people vote for Trump, this is one of those reasons. Regarding legality of funding being stopped by the President, I am not a lawyer (and I am guessing neither are you), so I am not going to take your legal opinion on this and will wait for the courts to issue the final ruling.
The fact that there’s a specific law called the Impoundment Control Act where the specific actions Trump is trying were made illegal should give you a hint to which way the court cases are going to go..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_and_Imp...
Those numbers are for the wrong line items, and the WH press secretary was wrong about the source of those funds. Both of those were out of the state department budget, which (putting aside the present murky status) did not oversee USAID at the time.
What can I say... if you are correct about this (there are a lot of claims from both sides but no proofs), I hope DOGE gets its hands on the State Department, too. We have enough worthy causes to take care of inside the US.
Tell that to TikTok.
He's not constitutionally able to do so.
But DOGE has been trying to do effectively that for the past month, and has been distressingly successful at it. (For all that conservatives whined about the existence of an unaccountable deep state override elected officials making laws, that's basically an accurate description of DOGE.)
You know TikTok is back in App Stores with Oracle hosting content even though all of that is illegal?
Trump is ignoring the law now.
Another thing that it turns out was just "guidelines".
How will this affect Intel?
Why the US? Why not Europe? Ireland or UK?
Probably because Europe is not threatening them behind the scenes and perhaps offering money as well.
Diversifying chip manufacturing more globally is pretty crucial to maintaining the world order though. Sadly, having a fab in the US under the current administration is not helpful to the west in general. Getting TSMC or building an alternative to TSMC in Europe, UK, Canada, Australia, would be very smart.
I believe a lot of the machines TSMC depends on are even produced in Europe, so there should be room to make some deal!
I doulbt anyone will build a factory in Europe. It won't be competitive because of the energy prices on the continent.
Is chip manufacturing particularly energy intensive? I would expect that chip plants are not that price sensitive about electricity, within reason.
Seems your average semiconductor foundry needs around 100MW[1] to 200MW[2] of electrical power to operate. The main consumption is down to refrigeration chillers[3].
Average US house uses about 12600kWh per year[4], or 1.44kW average across a year. So that means one foundry takes about what 70k to 140k houses would take.
[1]: https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/dotcom/client_serv...
[2]: https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/6/24091367/semiconductor-man...
[3]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02786...
[4]: https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2020/c&e/pd...
It is.
The light source uses a lot of power to produce those few hundreds of watts of radiation
Prices in the nordics aren't that bad.
It went up considerably because of nordic exports to the rest of Europe. They are producing enough for themselves, but not if they have to share. It's the same reason why US gas prices are somewhat on the high side lately - a lot of it is exported to Europe, and the price differential is large enough to make this worth the trouble.
You realize that the US buys energy from Canada right? The US has no advantage on energy. Even in Europe, building more power capacity is simply a matter of wanting to.
Right. I do. The US buys a lot of it, and it is cheap.
As for Europe, you are right, partially it's a matter of a mindset, however there are objective reasons for expensive energy. France's access to cheap uranium is almost gone. Europe refuses to sign long-term russian gas delivery contracts and are buying spot which costs arm and leg (whatever is left of it). German power plants are shuttered. LNG imported from the US is very expensive.
Some German CEOs (I think Volkswagen if I recall correctly) said recently that Germany offers no competitive advantage these days. I agree.
Where do you think manufacturing will go? Energy is everything.
However hard it is, the decline of the US is going to force Europe and the rest of the western countries to build out replacements for US labour and goods. The US is simply not a reliable trading partner nor ally under the new administration. Energy will be built.
The US and European alliance was a marriage of convenience. One of the results of Ukrainian conflict was manufacturing moving from Europe to the US. Energy has to be built from something, and Europe does not have it.
Europe has sun and wind. In the time it would take the US to build one nuclear plant Europe can build over 10x as much renewable capacity, for 1/10th the cost. As much as I'm pro environmental protection, the reality is that a lot of places are preferring renewables because they are cheaper and faster to build than traditional power plants for the same energy outputs. Even Texas is building tons of renewables for this reason.
So yes, energy will be built in Europe and elsewhere.
One word: BS. Germany energy shortages were in the news early this year, and last year, and the year before then. See this, for example: https://www.power-technology.com/news/germany-wind-power-sho... Germany and its renewables is just a laughing stock at this point. One cannot run an industry on renewables, and they are finding this out. There was already some talk about restarting nuclear power plants.
With your optimism, they would have tackled this problem already.
Texas already paid its price for their lack of investment in traditional generation facilities.
1- The US might be (might have been) the only country which would intervene if Taiwan were invaded by China.
2- The US is also the only country which threatens the world with tariffs for political concessions
Maybe TSMC will go to Europe as well, but for now it makes a lot of sense why they choose the US.
Currently everything points in the direction that capitulation would be the outcome of China invading Taiwan, with political pressure to eject any democratically elected leader in Taiwan for the sake of "negotiations".
It was what this administration did in Afghanistan, it's doing in Ukraine, and nothing tells us it will be different with Taiwan.
Because the US will soon have the cheap labor needed to produce them.
[dead]
This deal had been agreed before...
"TSMC plans to invest $65 billion to build three semiconductor fabs in north Phoenix, the largest investment in Arizona history." - https://www.azfamily.com/2024/11/16/tsmc-arizona-secures-fun...
No, secretary of commerce Lutnick said that the $65 billion deal was Biden's and was subsidized by the US ($6 billion).
He then bragged that Trump extorted TSMC using tariffs and forced TSMC to invest another $100 billion to avoid tariffs.
The US is using tariffs to have other nations build "their" industry. After that work is done, these nations will be ready to become new theaters for US proxy wars.
From the article: "TSMC plans to invest $65 billion to build three semiconductor fabs in north Phoenix, the largest investment in Arizona history."
Sigh. From the horse's mouth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa7MH1zLEYU
Lutnick:
"America um under the Biden Administration uh tsmc received a $6 billion Grant and that encouraged them to build 65 billion dollar so America gave tsmc 10% of the money to build here and now you're seeing the power of Donald Trump's presidency because tsmc the greatest manufacturer of chips in the world is coming to America with a hundred billion dollar investment and of course that is backed by the fact that they can come here because they can avoid paying tariffs so the idea is come to America build greatness in America."
But that horse doesn't sound reliable.
TSMC never pays tariffs anyways, whomever did the importing does so companies like Apple, GM, Tesla, etc.
An announced deal really should be worthless politically, we've all seen Foxconn or Apple announce big investments during Trump's first presidency for them to just walk it back later.
How's that huge Foxconn investment in Wisconsin going? I can't believe people are falling for the exact same scam again.
TSMC has followed through already in Arizona where they are actually producing. The CHIPS act has been fairly successful, and I know for a fact that there are other locations already being planned based on the Act. Granted, this administration could just decide to ignore all that, but I gather instead they will just take credit for something the previous administration did.