18 June

TSMC stands for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. The most important company in the world. Semiconductors are chips, the chips used in all our devices now. Not just computers, our cars, TVs, vacuum cleaners, phones - pretty much everything. It’s not an exaggeration to say that without these semiconductors, the world we know would stop. We felt a bit of that last year, the reason you couldn’t buy a new car was because there weren’t enough chips. These chips are the most advanced technology humans have ever produced. They’re almost impossibly hard to make, and the processes behind the most advanced chips are top secret. The Chinese have ramped up their production of semiconductors, but they don’t know how to make the most advanced chips. Joe Biden recently legislated to protect these secrets even further, as most of the intellectual discovery work had its origins in the US. (Trump was too stupid to even understand what’s at stake.) It’s difficult to exaggerate the genius behind their invention. The science of these chips is quantum science, the physical reality of what happens inside these chips in your phone and other devices is a long way from the reality we think we know. Time actually travels backwards on some parts of these chips, I’m not making that up. You’re using a time machine, reading this right now. This is why China and the US are in constant war mode over Taiwan. Not the reasons given in the news. The US will never allow Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing to fall into Chinese hands.