Taiwan Semiconductor founder Morris Chang is known to be skeptical about the TSMC plant in Arizona. Not only will it be incredibly challenging to reproduce stateside what TSMC has in Taiwan, Chang questions the geopolitical worth of diversifying production.
To understand why, stop and consider the exacting, staggeringly sophisticated nature of TSMC’s operations in Taiwan, operations that loom so large in global economic output. In the “closed economy” that is the world economy, it’s then worth considering how economically devastating it would be for China’s economy if there’s ever a hiccup that destabilizes TSMC’s chip production in Taiwan.
Think about the above alongside a pivot to the U.S.’s present stance toward China. It’s not just that the Trump administration is imposing tariffs on Chinese production that, by hurting China’s producers, will hurt the U.S.’s. It’s that the Trump administration is threatening to rescind the visas of something like 277,000 Chinese students presently going to school in the U.S. What a dangerous move.
Not so, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio indicates that many of the Chinese students are potential threats thanks to their ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or because they’re majoring in “critical fields.” Where to begin?
If we ignore that joining the CCP today is the U.S. equivalent of joining the Elks Club, let’s assume for a second that the CCP members stateside are in fact “communist,” and worse, despise the U.S. If so, better for the communists to be in the U.S., and for being in the U.S. seeing the dynamic genius of the country they disdain up close. Put another way, if Americans really want to believe that China is “communist” despite the country’s cities being densely packed with endless Americana of the McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Apple iPhone variety, the best way to cure communism is to expose communists to its opposite.
As for “critical studies,” what better way to keep Americans safe than for the U.S. to be filled with hundreds of thousands of Chinese students pursuing seemingly important knowledge. Talk about a shield from invasion…by China. Seriously, why on earth would China ever want to invade the country housing so many of its best and brightest, along with the children of China’s best and brightest? It’s not just that a Chinese invasion would bring harm to extraordinarily talented Chinese citizens studying stateside, it’s that the U.S. would have the ultimate bargaining chip should China ever invade.
Which brings us back to Chang and his view that the safest scenario of all for TSMC, Taiwan, and the global economy is to keep all TSMC’s production right in Taiwan. Talk about a peaceful shield!
That’s because production at TSMC is so incredibly exact that the mere detonation of a bomb in Taiwan could, assuming even the most minor of tremors, completely throw off TSMC’s production. And what hurts TSMC devastates China precisely because the global economy is so reliant on unfettered chip production inside Taiwan.
It’s a long way of saying that “globalism” and “interconnectedness” aren’t pejoratives, rather they’re exponentially more effective barriers to war than diplomacy as practiced by individuals with last names like Rubio. In a world where global production is reliant on Taiwanese chips, and Chinese nationals are reverent of U.S. universities, Americans, Chinese and the whole world can rest quite a bit easier knowing that they're less likely to suffer the very real possibility of grievous error crafted in Beijing or Washington, D.C.
