MJ Akbar
THE news is peppered by reports of Beijing’s jet fighters flitting through skies and battleships foaming through on the waves. But no one in Taiwan is dying of dread, or seems particularly terrified even if concern is a legitimate part of the establishment’s discourse.
This is not a puzzle if you appreciate the reasons for Taipei’s confidence: domination of production in the semiconductor industry. Its exports amount to a quarter of the country’s GDP. You can always add more impressive details from any glance at a prime product of the chip-world, the internet. You supply the chip and America needs you as much as you need America.
Semiconductors are the brains of contemporary life. They are inbred into every minute of today’s existence. They control need, comfort, income, outcome; they are the heart, mind and body of the 21st century. Statistics about Taiwan’s silent triumph in this business are spread across the internet through search engines if you want to check.
Impressive figures
In rounded percentages, Taiwan produces 90 per cent of the world’s advanced semiconductors needed for quantum computing or Artificial Intelligence (AI) or any number of innovations I have absolutely no knowledge of. In contrast, China produces only 16 per cent of the chips it needs and imports $400 billion worth each year. One Taiwan company, TSMC, has an astonishing 56.7 per cent of the international market share; the next biggest producer, Samsung, has just 8.5 per cent. The only American company in the vicinity is GlobalFoundries, with 6.6 per cent.
Taiwan is delighted to tell anyone who cares to listen that its exports to China have come down and its exports to the US have gone up. So let us discuss what happens if someone in Beijing gets irrational enough to press the destructive button of war. In theory, Beijing may want to capture these factories intact, but what prevents the Taiwanese from blowing up what they have created instead of handing them over meekly to the enemy in case the US refuses to protect its ally in a military confrontation?
Startling possibility
The algorithms of possibility are startling. If the Taiwanese flatten the semiconductor supply lines, America’s superpower tech industry goes on a long, long holiday to nowhere. Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm lead a crowd of companies into bankruptcy. This is only the beginning of an epic story. American products disappear, markets crash, jobs freeze, cities get inflamed. Washington is clueless about the remedy, which has happened before.
Moscow sits back and enjoys the fun. Russia makes its own chips, not least because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine war. Someone in Beijing should get the point: geography is so 20th-century as a reason for conflict. The disputes of the 21st century should be ideological, an existential debate between freedom and dictatorship to start with.
Taiwan’s motto is practical. You can’t become invincible, so become indisTHE news is peppered by reports of Beijing’s jet fighters flitting through skies and battleships foaming through on the waves. But no one in Taiwan is dying of dread, or seems particularly terrified even if concern is a legitimate part of the establishment’s discourse. This is not a puzzle if you appreciate the reasons for Taipei’s confidence: domination of production in the semiconductor industry. Its exports amount to a quarter of the country’s GDP. You can always add more impressive details from any glance at a prime product of the chip-world, the internet. You supply the chip and America needs you as much as you need America.
Semiconductors are the brains of contemporary life. They are inbred into every minute of today’s existence. They control need, comfort, income, outcome; they are the heart, mind and body of the 21st century. Statistics about Taiwan’s silent triumph in this business are spread across the internet through search engines if you want to check.
Impressive figures
In rounded percentages, Taiwan produces 90 per cent of the world’s advanced semiconductors needed for quantum computing or Artificial Intelligence (AI) or any number of innovations I have absolutely no knowledge of. In contrast, China produces only 16 per cent of the chips it needs and imports $400 billion worth each year. One Taiwan company, TSMC, has an astonishing 56.7 per cent of the international market share; the next biggest producer, Samsung, has just 8.5 per cent. The only American company in the vicinity is GlobalFoundries, with 6.6 per cent.
Taiwan is delighted to tell anyone who cares to listen that its exports to China have come down and its exports to the US have gone up. So let us discuss what happens if someone in Beijing gets irrational enough to press the destructive button of war. In theory, Beijing may want to capture these factories intact, but what prevents the Taiwanese from blowing up what they have created instead of handing them pensable. Wise!
I go a telling lesson in the different hues of ancestor worship on the way back during a family visit in Singapore. They dine early in the east, so the sun was still in the lower sky when we reached our table at Marina Bay.
A drone, of the kind you now see at every cricket match, began to flutter above the eyeline, twinkling on its radials. My nine-year-old grandson, his imagination lit by the sight, posed a conundrum: “If you were sitting in a metal box without safety belts in a spaceship, would you jump out if I gave you a trillion dollars?” My Inner Socrates rose to action: if I jumped out of a spaceship I would be dead, so what good would a trillion dollars be to a dead grandfather? He didn’t pause. “Have you made a will in my name?”
Moral of the story: Don’t argue with the future. Submit, and hope they keep the joss sticks burning when you return during Ghost Month.
