TAIPEI — Taiwan is accelerating efforts to move more semiconductor production overseas after determining that the industry protecting Taiwan from geopolitical irrelevance may be too important to continue locating primarily in Taiwan.
TSMC now plans roughly $265 billion of investment in Arizona, while Taiwanese companies are preparing another $20 billion of U.S. investment as Washington works to make the semiconductor supply chain safer by relocating increasingly large portions of it away from the island whose safety depends partly on having it.
U.S. officials have praised Taiwan for helping reindustrialize America, while European governments are similarly encouraging Taiwanese chipmakers to expand production in Europe, ensuring that Taiwan’s indispensable technological advantage becomes more conveniently distributed among the countries promising to defend it.
Taiwanese officials continue to describe the overseas expansion as strengthening resilient global supply chains.
Industry executives have been somewhat less poetic. One Taiwanese executive acknowledged that expanding abroad is politically necessary and that companies essentially have little choice.
The strategy leaves Taiwan with an increasingly sophisticated national-security doctrine: remain indispensable enough that powerful allies must protect you, while helping those allies become progressively less dependent on you.
Officials stressed this should make Taiwan considerably safer right up until it works.
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