TSMC's lithography machines come from ASML, which is in the Netherlands. I always find it surprising that people talk about TSMC so much and not mention ASML; people talk about "TSMC's 5nm process", but it's really ASML's tech that powers all of that.
Setting up a new factory to replace TSMC is not trivial of course, as it's operationally hard, but none of the core tech would be "in China's hands".
China doesn't need to trample Taiwan, they can simply afford to hire the best engineers out of TSMC at 2.5x pay because Chinese companies are backed directly by the Chinese government and can afford to throw tons of money at this problem.
Given how dependent high end computing is on TSMC (Amd, Apple, Nvidea, + more) it's quite unlikely to be a viable strategy.
But given how messed up & fragmented the EU military is if the US stops military support for Taiwan china will likely directly declare War and Attack. (To be precise there is no EU military, just that of all members which makes it fragmented and in many cases is their military isn't in the best condition. Also China wouldn't declare War as it doesn't recognizance Taiwan, i.e. they would instead "use military force to attack rebels and terrorists" or something like that).
> Given how dependent high end computing is on TSMC (Amd, Apple, Nvidea, + more) it's quite unlikely to be a viable strategy.
That's a temporary advantage for Taiwan, and pretty much their only one.
A silicon atom is only around 0.1nm wide, so the end of scaling is coming up like a brick wall. We've got maybe a half dozen nodes left.
After that, industrial espionage, pumping up SMIC or some other new Chinese domestic equivalent at the time, and literally just leaking info publicly so the EU, US, and ROK are viable replacements once chips become truly a commodity will cut the dependence on Taiwan. At that point it's not worth facing China's nukes to tell them that they can't have Crimea^H^H^H^H^H^H Taiwan.
You also can't make a transistor out of a single atom. The fact that you need doped silicon to have a semiconductor rather than just silicon as an insulator means that we'll be cut off well before then. A ~50x reduction in feature size (so that's 6ish nodes of shrink) is about what I've heard about industry expectations.
That being said the future never ceases to surprise.
> china will likely directly declare War and Attack.
This is the American dream.
But no, China is not that stupid. Sure, they want Taiwan back, but they will not declare war and create global instability right in their backyard. Only stupid people would do this, and the Chinese are not stupid. They are in a marathon. They see the goal in 30, 50, 100 years. They will not give this gift to the American government.
A better idea is to give a US passport to every TSMC employee NOW (exempt them from having to hold a green card and live in USA for 5 years first). And change the law so that US citizens residing overseas with no US-sourced income are exempted from filing and paying taxes.
Other countries that wish to have leading edge commercial fabs, e.g. Germany or Netherlands, should compete with USA and try to get their passports to TSMC employees first. Tell them your country does not tax citizens on overseas income, and like Taiwan, has universal healthcare, high-speed rail, and gun control. Netherlands can also advertise that TSMC employees likely already have some Dutch friends at ASML.
