Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which is manufacturing the world’s most advanced microchips, conducts business on the island of Taiwan, dead center in one of the most geopolitically volatile places on the planet.
That makes people in Washington very nervous. TSMC dominates the semiconductor industry; it’s a company that the United States can’t do without, 80 miles off the coast of China.
The U.S. government has appropriated tens of billions of dollars to strengthen America’s own semiconductor sector and help fund TSMC’s nascent operations in the United States, far from China, which has never renounced the use of force to absorb Taiwan.
But TSMC has invested billions of its own over nearly four decades growing deep roots in Taiwan. There, it employs a small army of engineers, research and development scientists, technicians and production workers in the exquisitely complex task of producing chips, etching electronic pathways smaller than a cell on plates of silicon.
It would be exceedingly difficult to replicate what TSMC has built in Taiwan, said Mark Liu, chairman of TSMC. Developing and producing the company’s most cutting-edge chips at a rapid pace requires a huge effort, he said, as many as 3,000 research scientists for one generation of the technology.
“We cannot put it anyplace else,” he said.
TSMC has embarked on a global expansion, with two factories under construction in the United States and one in Japan, as well as a possible facility in Germany. It’s part of the company’s strategy to address the calls by U.S. officials to reduce America’s reliance on chips made in Taiwan.
That makes the 68-year-old Mr. Liu, who holds a doctoral degree in electronic engineering and computer science, as much a diplomat as a scientist and an executive. He joined TSMC 30 years ago after stints at Intel and Bell Labs, rose through the ranks and today runs the $500 billion company with its chief executive and vice chairman, C.C. Wei.
In late June, when he spoke to The New York Times at TSMC’s offices in the northern Taiwan city of Hsinchu, he had just returned from a trip to the United States, which he said he visits roughly every three months.
“We have a pretty good relationship across Congress, the Commerce Department, the White House. I think they know us,” he said.
It’s a bit of an understatement. Initial efforts to court TSMC and bring its production facilities to the United States led to the creation of the CHIPS and Science Act, a program to expand the U.S. semiconductor industry. So complete is TSMC’s lead in the industry that there is no obvious second option for all it does. Any clash over Taiwan — where the vast majority of its manufacturing happens — would stop the flow of the TSMC microchips, putting a deep freeze on the technology industry and, in turn, the global economy.
As befits a company obsessed with protecting its hard-won technological lead, TSMC’s offices feel more like a secret government…
2023-08-04 04:01:10
Link from www.nytimes.com