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Over four decades, I have had the opportunity to consult with almost all of the major companies in the PC, consumer electronics, and telecommunications industries. In 1991, when the PC industry was barely a decade old, Acer\u2019s founder Stan Shih invited me to tour the company\u2019s new PC factory in Taiwan. What I saw wasn\u2019t just a factory\u2013it was the foundation of a new world order in technology manufacturing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Over the years, I\u2019ve gained a deeper understanding of Taiwan\u2019s crucial role in the global technology ecosystem. Semiconductor leaders like TSMC, along with manufacturing powerhouses such as Compal, Foxconn, Quanta, Pegatron, and Wistron, have built an ecosystem unmatched anywhere else in the world. This network has become the backbone of production for much of the world\u2019s technology\u2013supplying chips and devices for Apple, Nvidia, AMD, HP, Dell, and many others. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Taiwan, an island about the size of Maryland just 90 miles off the Chinese mainland, produces roughly 90 percent of the world\u2019s advanced semiconductors. Those chips power your iPhone, your laptop, your car, and even the massive data centers driving artificial intelligence. Without Taiwan\u2019s fabrication facilities, the global technology industry does not just slow down\u2013it stops.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That the flow of Taiwanese chips could stop is more than a theoretical risk\u2013it\u2019s a crisis already in motion. China, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province to be reclaimed, could attempt to impose a naval blockade around the island. In fact, the China\u2019s People\u2019s Liberation Army recently conducted live-fire military exercises<\/a> in the waters surrounding the island\u2013a dramatic escalation of the drills that have become increasingly common since the last Taiwanese presidential election. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n These are not abstract war games; they are rehearsals for a naval blockade of the island, and everyone paying attention knows it. Colleagues in Taiwan who study such scenarios warn that even a rehearsal<\/em> \u2014with no missiles, no boots on the ground, just ships in the water\u2014could choke off the world\u2019s chip supply and cripple the American tech economy. And the chance that China might risk a blockade could increase while the U.S. is focusing its resources on Iran, they say.\u00a0<\/p>\n