Artificial Intelligence (AI) doesn’t live in the cloud; it lives in fabs, packaging plants, memory stacks, substrate lines, testing facilities and server factories. AI has a geographic map. Its most important point, other than America itself, is Taiwan. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, fabricates roughly 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductor chips. Even that striking number vastly understates the U.S. and allied dependency. It can leave the impression that Taiwan’s role is mainly a chip-fabrication problem—and that TSMC’s new factory in Arizona, United States can solve it. It can’t….

Taiwan’s advantage isn’t merely one company or one factory. It is the cluster: foundries, packaging houses, substrate suppliers, materials firms, equipment engineers, testing specialists, design-service providers and process experts operating in close proximity. That density shortens iteration cycles, improves yields, accelerates ramp-up and compounds tacit knowledge. Decades of operational learning can’t be bought instantly, even with generous subsidies and political urgency.

A country (United States) determined to win the defining technological race of the century can’t allow its chief rival (China) to control the industrial base (Taiwan) on which that race depends.

Alexander Benard et al., Taiwan Is the Key to AI Dominance, WSJ, May 13, 2026