TSMC to make advanced AI semiconductors in Japan

https://apnews.com/article/semiconductors-tsmc-japan-taiwan-ai-11256f2bfde73ca23d08331ad138d6d5

by dev_tty01 • 5 months ago

242 173 5 months ago

Isn’t this an erosion of the silicon shield Taiwan is protected by? If they make semiconductors everywhere else then the world has less economic incentive to protect Taiwan from war.

stingraycharles4• 5 months ago

Yes, it is. The unfortunate reality is that western societies care more about TSMC than Taiwan, and they’re hedging their bets this way.

david2ndaccount• 5 months ago

The world won’t allow a dependence on a single geopolitically threatened entity in the long run, so either they defuse that risk themselves or risk a competitor filling that role. This move is better for TSMC itself.

3eb7988a1663• 5 months ago

Who would protect Taiwan anymore? I have my doubts that any prior defense agreement would be upheld today.

adastra22• 5 months ago

What defense agreements?

trvz• 5 months ago

No. To get to Taiwan, Mainland Taiwan first has to go through China, the ocean, and Taiwan. They’ll be fine without anyone else’s help.

porridgeraisin• 5 months ago

America doesn't defend taiwan for its semiconductors - it's all american IP anyways. They defend it for the same reason they defend japan and Phillipines - to control the pacific "frontier" these three countries form before guam. Typically against China, but they would do the same nonetheless.

dd_xplore• 5 months ago

But why should the world depend on a single country or entity? Everything should be diversified.

raincole4• 5 months ago

Yes.

But it will happen one way or another. Taiwan's Sovereignty is completely depending on one single country, the US. It's not like that Taiwan can just say no if the US demands more diversified chip production.

tzahifadida• 5 months ago

Disagree. Making the world less centralized to TSMC chips makes less incentive to invade at the near future. There is no strategic upside to do it right now. If nothing else, to me it seems china is a strategic mover, and will not sacrifice anything for no strategic value.

bschwindHN• 5 months ago

China doesn't want to invade Taiwan for TSMC.

Waterluvian• 5 months ago

That’s a deeply oversimplified understanding of Taiwan and reunification. There’s so much good reading on the topic out there and it’s really worth even just skimming the surface of it.

diego_sandoval• 5 months ago

If TSMC didn't exist, China would probably have already invaded Taiwan.

AlexCoventry• 5 months ago

Seems likely that Takaichi has given Taiwan a Japanese security guarantee. [1] This may be a quid pro quo.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/p-4nFgs9fRE

topsykrates• 5 months ago

Despite what Takaichi says, if there is a war in Taiwan, Japan can only defend itself and it's interests in its sovereign territory. Japan's pacifist constitution only allows defense, even building an aircraft carrier was very controversial because it's considered to be too offensive. It's highly unlikely that Japan will actively help Taiwan defend itself

mullingitover• 5 months ago

My guess: Japan deletes the pacifist promises in its constitution, fully rearms, announces nuclear weapons capability (or does an Israel and ‘refuses to confirm or deny’), and signs a mutual defense pact with Taiwan.

raincole4• 5 months ago

She didn't give a security guarantee. And even if she wanted she can't.

Japan can't even sell arms to Taiwan right now. Even starting selling arms would be a huge change, let alone a mutual defensive pact.

It's extremely hard to change the constitution of Japan. It's the only constitution that has never been revised since WWII. LDP has been pushing this agenda for decades and nothing really happened.

jeeeb2• 5 months ago

Japan giving a security guarantee to Taiwan would be major news!

In reality no such thing happened and one YouTube video of a handful of protestors doesn’t make it so.

What she did say is that a Chinese attack on Taiwan _could_ clearly become an existential threat to Japan. Note that key word _could_

Which… of course it could!

Japan hosts multiple US military bases. If it developed into an armed conflict between the US and China then it’s exceedingly likely that Japan would be attacked. Think Chinese missiles aimed At Yokosuka, just south of Tokyo.

Not only that but Japan and China have multiple territorial disputes. It’s not hard to imagine China deciding to go all in and settle those as well.

typ• 5 months ago

The silicon shield became a slogan that has only been popularized in recent years. The potential crisis of war has been there for more than half a century (even before semiconductors became a thing). The real value proposition of the status quo is the freedom of navigation between the northeastern Asian countries and the SEA (the Strait of Malacca, aka the lifeline of energy imports), and the consequential domino effect of the entire western Pacific.

Also, not sure why everyone forgets about it. People should have learned from the experience of the pandemic that the cutting-edge foundry nodes are not really the crucial ones, as being the bottleneck of industrial infrastructure. A delay of the next-gen iPhone or RTX gaming card isn't that catastrophic. But a shortage of embedded MCUs, which are actually fabricated by mature nodes, could stall the entire industrial base of a country.

cynicalsecurity• 5 months ago

Nature is healing.jpg

yanhangyhy• 5 months ago

Taiwanese politicians, like those under American-style democracy in many regions, only care about safeguarding their own interests and have no concern for how to protect the interests of the public. Once TSMC’s factories are completed in Japan and the United States and the technology is secured, Taiwan will no longer have any value worth protecting. Of course, the politicians can always take planes and leave in advance.

earthnail• 5 months ago

Not necessarily. If TSMC doesn’t build these fabs in Japan or USA, these governments might just mandate that chips are manufactured elsewhere. Intel could have a big comeback.

This keeps ppl locked in to the TSMC universe. The Japan and US fabs produce just a fraction of what these countries need.

KK7NIL• 5 months ago

The US protected Taiwanese sovereignty for decades before they even had a single semiconductor fab. This idea of "the silicon shield" just shows a complete ignorance of the history of Taiwan and its place in the geopolitical order.

XorNot• 5 months ago

The US historically did not threaten military action against NATO allied nations as well.

The past is of no value in predicting the future right now.

mayama• 5 months ago

Decades in which China started as peasant army(US admin view) and wasn't mostly a peer adversity. But, that changed almost a decade ago and defending Taiwan will become more costly and time passes. New American security document, mostly focusing on America, even acknowledges this.

mschuster91• 5 months ago

The US protected Taiwanese sovereignty for decades before they even had a single semiconductor fab.

That was before the current administration wiped out the very idea of "soft power" and put everything including NATO up for disposal.

There is, frankly, no way for anyone to trust the US again until the US undergoes steps similar to post-1945 Germany.

misja111• 5 months ago

Trump has openly stated that there would be no military retaliation by the US in case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Only an economic one. And we have seen what that is worth after the Krim was taken. It lasted a few years and then sanctions started getting dropped.

So the time of military US protection is behind us.

hirako2000• 5 months ago

More so a damage control move. In the eventuality Taiwan, and its factually on Chinese land production sites get affected, it won't affect as much the supply chain as it otherwise would.

The U.S and Japan indeed will have less incentive to defend the sovereignty of Taiwan, but other reasons remain to ensure the statu quo remains. Purely geopolitical, not just industrial.

gexla• 5 months ago

I would argue the chips don't even matter (important, but not as a reason for defending Taiwan.) It's a strategically important location that is a stone's throw from Japanese islands. If Japan feels the need, then nukes may be on the table. If that were to happen, S. Korea may not be far behind. And the cycle spirals.

contrarian1234• 5 months ago

Right now is an AI goldrush. They can get crazy lucrative investments and lock in amazing deals. In a decade the Chinese tech will catch up and the AI boom will slow down and the Taiwanese will have to coast on what they have. They have to capitalize on this moment as much as they can b/c it's not going to last long. Things are going to get much tougher very soon

colechristensen• 5 months ago

If there aren't significant changes in the trajectory of world politics the people in charge might just be planning their exit to the fabs they're building in Japan and the US.

Sammi• 5 months ago

You speak like the Chinese catching up with the technology is inevitable. The Chinese aren't behind in semiconductor and airplane technology for lack of trying. They are constantly trying to catch up to a moving goal post.

There is an established playbook that the Chinese have used for decades when taking over an industrial sector from other countries. They funnel vast amounts of state funding into it, sell at or below cost for decades, win the low end market, and then slowly and gradually move up the technology chain. It's worked for almost everything, but it's this last part that just isn't working for them with semiconductors and aviation. They aren't capable of catching up fast enough in these two fields. These are sectors that are both too large for any one country to do well on their own. Even for someone as large as China. It requires a global supply chain.

zarzavat2• 5 months ago

TSMC can shut the fabs down whenever they want. If the US think they can take over a fab like it's a t-shirt factory and keep it running without TSMC's cooperation they are sorely mistaken. What are you going to do when none of the Taiwanese workers turn up for work, or worse they do turn up and sabotage the fab.

stingraycharles4• 5 months ago

Of course you’re right, but it’s a hell of a lot easier than when the fabs are located exclusively in Taiwan.

petesergeant3• 5 months ago

If you don’t think the US security apparatus will come up with a reasonable plan for doing just that within 2 months of it opening, I don’t think you’re thinking hard enough about this.

What are you going to do when none of the Taiwanese workers turn up for work, or worse they do turn up and sabotage the fab.

You’re going to offer them a lot of money, citizenship, and exfiltration of their family to turn up at work, and threaten them with lifetime in supermax if they sabotage anything.

What US judge isn’t going to allow you to do what the hell you want under national security provisions if it comes to that?

ekianjo4• 5 months ago

Nobody was ever going to war with China over TSMC. Whoever believed that has been conned.

yieldcrv• 5 months ago

America selectively gets into conflicts worldwide to deter China from invading China

As soon as we get the right semiconductor supply chain stateside can switch up on that island and reach parity with the rest of the world’s contribution to that issue: none.

kyboren• 5 months ago

Japan and America have now both gotten TSMC to commit to a decent level of domestic advanced-node fabrication.

Meanwhile Europe only got 40k WSPMs of 12+ nm capacity: https://overclock3d.net/news/software/bringing_advanced_semi...

avhception• 5 months ago

Germany squandered so much money on nonsense, when they could have simply driven the few kilometers over to Eindhoven and bought an ASML machine for "Silicon Saxony". Sure, it would have taken years and years and serious commitment by the government and private sector to make that a successful move. But instead of putting in the hard work with a clear vision for the future, we mostly spend our time whining and wailing. It's a shame.

danielbln• 5 months ago

The only forward facing government that actually had a drive to change anything useful for the future broke apart with internal squabbles, with a big part of it by the market liberals torpedoing things left and right. And now we're back to a government of stand still, like we did the almost two decades before.

We get what we deserve.

jorvi7• 5 months ago

High-end chips should be more of a EU concerted effort rather than every country for itself.

The problem is that unlike Airbus, which (highly inefficiently) can be made in multiple countries, you can't really spread out parts of a fab that way. The most you can do is fab machines + chips + chip packaging. Netherlands already has fab machines and in packaging there isn't a high margin.

That leaves chips, and you can be sure that whoever gets the fabs, the other EU countries will throw a shit fit and demand counter investments to compensate. And on top of that there is also regional animosity. So even if it makes logical sense to pop the fab down in the middle of the blue banana, it won't make political sense because France and all of South and East EU will be angry about "the rich getting richer".

roenxi2• 5 months ago

That seems a bit too simple. I saw one particular graph [0] once that really stuck with me illustrating just how decisively Europe was ejected from the semiconductor market. It takes more than just inaction to achieve results like that. In many ways it could be called an impressive feat that only the Europeans could achieve. 44% of production to 9% - losing a steady 1% of the market every year, largest to smallest player. No other region is even in a position to do that badly even if they tried.

[0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/...

joe_mamba23• 5 months ago

when they could have simply driven the few kilometers over to Eindhoven and bought an ASML machine for "Silicon Saxony"

That's not at all how it works. You're talking as if you're buying a plug-and-play Xerox copy machine that you can just unbox and start printing copies of your work and make money.

Buying the latest EUV machines doesn't get you the latest nodes and economically viable yields.

Intel, Samsung also have the latest ASML machines that TSMC has and yet they haven't caught up to TSMC because there's a lot more to semi manufacturing that just the machine itself.

If Germany just buys an ASML machine it would be an expensive paperweight without the process know-how that engineers at TSMC have amassed over the decades in order to get the most economically competitive yields.

assaddayinh• 5 months ago

Cultural failure on a massive scale

chvid• 5 months ago

ASML and its mostly European suppliers is still the key chokepoint that prevents highend semiconductor fabrication from moving to China.

joe_mamba23• 5 months ago

Except China has fabs on smaller nodes than Europe, so why can't Europe?

whp_wessel• 5 months ago

If Trump was European he would have long ago said “i only allow export of ASML machines if openai/nvidia/tsmc build 5gw urgently here in Europe with advanced nodes”. Fair if you ask me tbh

joe_mamba23• 5 months ago

Meanwhile Europe only got 40k WSPMs of 12+ nm capacity

EU leaders and VCs gave up on the electronics industry 20+ years ago and just kept offshoring it to the cheapest suppliers to lower costs and increase shareholder value.

You can validate this by looking at which sectors pay the highest EU wages and you'll see that hardware and electronics are not in the top.

And working in the electronics industry requires highly skilled knowhow and academic specialization, and you're not gonna attract people there if you don't pay them top wages if they can get more money and an easier job somewhere else like writing CRUD SW or pushing pencils in a bank.

gjadi2• 5 months ago

Not everyone is motivated by the highest wage they can get.

Good enough can be good enough and then aim for fun/interesting/challenging/fulfilling work instead of a fatter check.

mrtksn2• 5 months ago

What you are suggesting is vertical integration. If Europe goes crazy, can do that. From start to finish this chip thingy can become "magic crystals from Europe" as they already have control over the tooling. How many billions it will take to build the fabs with these tools and hire the talent from all over the planet and put all that in special economical zones? I don't know but I bet its less than those who don't have and end up buying the tools.

Europe is already a great place to build your life and despite the narrative about "EU killing businesses with over regulations", Europe is an exporter, that is EU makes physical things in large quantities(that's why USA is able to blackmail EU with tariffs). EU produces and exports so much, more than it consumes. Its closer to China than USA in this regard, you can check out the recent stats here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w...

The infrastructure is in place and there are both many nuclear reactors that were decommissioned early or not yet commissioned but canceled/put on hold as well as regions with plenty of sunshine or hydro power opportunities and also has all the expertise to re-work those quickly.

It's really a political decision to push for something like that or not. Geopolitics may eventually make it happen, who knows? At this time it makes more economical sense to make the tools and send them close to the larger supply chain of electronic products production.

philipallstar2• 5 months ago

Europe is already a great place to build your life

Agreed. Its countries' long-standing equivalents of America First policies mean that they spend far more on their own citizens, import far fewer people, and leave most of the charitable, defence, and research spending to the US taxpayer. Good for them.

insane_dreamer2• 5 months ago

EU never had significant chip fabrication (instead having a lock on the tooling) whereas Japan and the US essentially pioneered high-end chip manufacturing before losing ground to Taiwan and Korea.

Herring• 5 months ago

China has many faults. Invading other countries is not one of them. They haven’t dropped bombs on foreign soil in over 40 years. The Chinese playbook here is to first copy then out-scale and out-innovate until eventually nobody remembers why Taiwan was so important.

robinwhg• 5 months ago

Have you ever heard of Tibet?

randomNumber7• 5 months ago

This is more than 40 years ago and they likely didn't need many bombs for it.

jeeeb2• 5 months ago

If this was just about semiconductors then this would be a reasonable take but I doubt semi-conductors are anything more than a minor footnote in China’s strategic calculus vis-a-vis Taiwan.

Reunification with Taiwan has been a major policy goal of the CCP since the civil war and is one of Xi’s explicit policy goals. He just reaffirmed this commitment as part of his New Year’s speech.

Historically China has lacked force projection capability. However it has had a multi-decade modernisation and military build-up which has drastically changed this situation.

Further we’ve seen significant tightening of CCP control over society and in particular the military in Xi’s term.

A straight forward analysis of these events, in line with Xi’s public statements and past Chinese actions, is that the ground work is being laid for encirclement of Taiwan followed by China taking over, by force if necessary.

mrweasel2• 5 months ago

I don't understand what China want with Taiwan, they should just throw the biggest Uno reverse card in modern history and recognize Taiwan as an independent nation and win Xi the Nobel peace price next year.

testdelacc14• 5 months ago

In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India. They did it in the same week as the Cuban missile crisis, ensuring that the US and USSR would be too distracted to intervene.

This was after 13 years of friendship between India and China, where India had supported China in many ways including supporting the Communists getting the UN Security Council seat reserved for China. China and India had signed a friendship pact just a few years before.

Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good

That’s how India’s PM described this barbarous act of betrayal.

This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.

And before you try any nonsense of “oh that’s old news”, China is annexing Bhutan today to put pressure on India to make territorial concessions. (https://youtu.be/io8iaj0WYNI). China is annexing international waters in the South China Sea. China is attempting to annex islands controlled by Japan. China also has border disputes with Russia.

Educate yourself instead of uncritically spreading Chinese propaganda.

JumpCrisscross2• 5 months ago

I’ve still never seen a good analysis for why Mao did that in ‘62 other than stupidity.

Like, the centre of the world would be Asia today if Mao hadn’t needlessly (and profitlessly) trashed that goodwill.

RobertoG2• 5 months ago

You make it to look like if, out of the blue, they attacked they neighbor. Not mention of what the reason of China (right or wrong) could be. Then you complain of uncritically spreading propaganda.

From Wikipedia: "There had been a series of border skirmishes between the two countries after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when India granted asylum to the Dalai Lama. Chinese military action grew increasingly aggressive after India rejected proposed Chinese diplomatic settlements throughout 1960–1962, with China resuming previously banned "forward patrols" in Ladakh after 30 April 1962."

1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War

mamonster2• 5 months ago

This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.

This is the Chinese way since at least Zheng He and treasure ship voyages.

JumpCrisscross2• 5 months ago

China has many faults. Invading other countries is not one of them

Literally have ongoing border disputes with practically all of their neighbors, a few of which they’ve been shooting at (India) and ramming at sea (the Philippines) in the last few years.

alephnerd2• 5 months ago

Don't forget Vietnam. There's a reason the PLAVN has been buikding artificial islands on Truong Sa in order to build airstrips and deploying missile systems.

qwertytyyuu• 5 months ago

Isn’t Japan even more earthquake prone than Taiwan? Is that a good idea for the most sensitive electronics known to man?

mrweasel2• 5 months ago

I was going to ask if TSMC just have some weird earthquake fetish.

Realistically it's probably just that Japan is politically stable and safer than the other options in the area, while remaining fairly close to the rest of the supply chain.

sbinnee• 5 months ago

Not surprising from the fact that Taiwanese like Japan

RobertoG2• 5 months ago

A fact that is itself quite surprising, if you think about it.

m-schuetz• 5 months ago

Is it, though? Japan and America also have good relations, despite the latter nuking the former twice. Germany and other EU states are close now despite being on opposite sites in two world wars. Some/most countries manage to move on from past conflicts.

andrewstuart• 5 months ago

Pretty clear these days that the bottlenecks in technology manufacturing are now weaponising their monopolies/duopolies / triopolies.

They’ve become the trolls under the bridge and will squeeze every passerby for every dollar they’ve got.

The days of cheap computing have been in decline and are now dead, replaced with giga profits for this companies who managed to the the indispensable links in a chain with no or minimal competition.

etrvic• 5 months ago

Is this a decision took in light of the new prime minister’s party winning 2/3 lower house majority and her statements about protecting Taiwan against China?

TSMC to make advanced AI semiconductors in Japan

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