Seems like it just changed companies - Google/Apple/Nvidia saw an opportunity and poached a lot of them to death.

Nope, completely different people and skills.

Original silicon valley was actual making chips, silicon type. And there were a ton of folks here who were expert at it.

When it moved to Taiwan, those jobs disappeared from here.

The types of jobs you're talking about (high level design layer) didn't exist then.

When was this?