This recent video by real life lore made me think: is Biden jeopardizing Taiwan's silicon shield? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfjTUvzaZ7s

Basically, it's one of the most liberal ideas

• China imports $400B in electronics from Taiwan every year, the double of their oil imports. This level of economic integration makes war unlikely
• 90% of high-end Eletronics, including those used to create weapons, are made in Taiwan. This means that Western powers are heavily incentivized to protect the island against the commies

Biden is jeopardizing in many ways

• Semiconductor export restrictions means that China is less reliant on Taiwan for their AI endeavors. Same for 5G and Huawei.
• Semiconductor capital equipment restrictions (ASML, KLA, Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron, Lam Research) means that Chinese semiconductor foundries like SMIC and YMTC are going to need their indigenous counterparties to thrive. US has put China semicap industry in a place they can only innovate. The idea of stopping AI development in China may work in the short term, but it'll make their semiconductor industry untangled from the West eventually. You can't buy ASML Lithography equipment, put it into your fab, and then don't have support from ASML back in the Netherlands.
• The CHIPS Act is spending $50B to force companies like Micron, Samsung, Intel, and TSMC to build leading edge production in the US. This also diminishes Taiwan's silicon shield if the iPhone can be made in Arizona.

There are caveats

• China is at least 10 years away from EUV. The recent 7nm drama around SMIC is most likely the end of the road for them in terms of process pitch scaling
• The TSMC foundry in the US that starts production in 2024 is using 2020 technology, and they don't have plans to upgrade for the current leading edge 3nm process. Also, the TSMC fab in Arizona can't work without critical systems maintained back in Taiwan and advanced packaging processes critical to AI workloads like CoWoS are only made back in Tainan
• The capacity of the fabs currently being built in the US are only enough to keep critical military infrastructure flowing. $50B, the size of the check of the CHIPS Act is less than the annual capital expenditures of the semiconductor industry. TSMC itself spent $100B in capital in the last 3 years.

Considering the unwillingness of the Republican party to keep Unted States' Pax Americana, isn't unwise to disentangle these two economies? It seems it'd be better if they created the conditions that in case of an attack, the president in charge has no option than defende through force the island.