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The End of Taiwan? The End of U.S. and Europe Combined

Prosecutors in Taiwan indicted  in August 2025 three people in a case about sensitive chip technology, alleging they stole information from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) to help one of TSMC’s top equipment suppliers, Tokyo Electron, win more orders…Taiwanese officials say the theft of trade secrets has grown over the past decade and point most of the blame at China. Over the past couple of years, Taiwan’s investigation bureau has probed more than 120 cases involving trade-secret theft. “If Taiwan’s technology hub falls or its technologies are lost, the impact will extend beyond Taiwan to the U.S., Europe and the rest of the world,” Sun Chen-yi, deputy director general of the investigation bureau at Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice, said in an interview before his retirement in July 2025.

Excerpt from Yang Jie et al., Three Accused of Stealing TSMC Chip Secrets to Aid Japanese Supplier, WSJ, Aug. 28, 2025