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A U.S. led global treaty could halt the superintelligence race by monitoring the concentration of advanced hardware. Nate argues this is highly feasible because advanced AI chips rely on a narrow supply chain centered on TSMC in Taiwan and lithography machines from the Netherlands.
Gina Raimondo successfully shepherded the bipartisan CHIPS Act by framing semiconductor manufacturing as a national security issue. The U.S. military currently relies entirely on Taiwan-based TSMC for its leading-edge chips.
Gina Raimondo leveraged tech CEOs Tim Cook, Jensen Huang, and Lisa Su to pressure TSMC to manufacture in the United States. This customer pressure forced TSMC to accept lower federal subsidies and commit private capital.
Dave Blundon identifies TSMC as Nvidia's primary vulnerability, acting as the sole manufacturer for all Nvidia chips. TSMC allocates roughly one third of its total manufacturing capacity to Nvidia and another third to Apple.
Dmitri Alperovitch warns that the US remains highly dependent on Taiwan, which produces 90 percent of advanced chips and 40 percent of all chips globally. Even TSMC's 250 billion dollar commitment to build Arizona fabs cannot eliminate this critical dependency.
Severe TSMC backlogs are forcing Google to diversify its hardware supply chain, evaluating Samsung's 2-nanometer process and using Intel for advanced packaging. This shift shows competitors winning packaging and auxiliary component orders while TSMC focuses on advanced processors.
Google is evaluating Samsung's 2-nanometer process for components of its 10th-generation TPUs, Icefish, due to years-long backlogs and capacity limitations at its exclusive manufacturer, TSMC.
Google has also placed orders with Intel for 2028 production for advanced packaging services, indicating a strategy to diversify its chip supply chain beyond TSMC for less sensitive components.
Wafer allocation shifts contribute 1.8x, but AI has already absorbed 60% of TSMC's N3 node capacity, projected to hit 86% by next year, indicating this source will soon be exhausted.
The NASDAQ Philadelphia Semiconductor Index recently dropped over 20%, signifying bear market territory for chip stocks like Nvidia and TSMC, though it rebounded 7% on the day of recording.
Dixon claims a US-China war over Taiwan is impossible because the American MIC cannot produce weapons without Chinese components. He predicts chip independence for both nations within five years via TSMC building in the US and China's full-stack development.
TSMC's foundry model, which manufactures chips for any designer, produced 5x more wafers than Intel when Gelsinger returned in 2021. Intel's integrated design-manufacturing model and proprietary tools prevented it from serving a broad ecosystem.
Superintelligence development requires massive data centers and specialized hardware, designed by Nvidia, built by ASML (Netherlands), and manufactured by TSMC (Taiwan). This narrow supply chain makes development traceable and potentially controllable by coordinated countries.