If Taiwan ends up getting trampled by China, we'd effectively only have Samsung for cutting edge lithography.
Setting up a new factory to replace TSMC is not trivial of course, as it's operationally hard, but none of the core tech would be "in China's hands".
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/China-tech/China-hires-over...
I'm sure not all engineers at TSMC are willing to relocate from Taiwan to China but pretty much everything is for sale if the price is high enough.
Well, no one other than Taiwan I guess.
But given how messed up & fragmented the EU military is if the US stops military support for Taiwan china will likely directly declare War and Attack. (To be precise there is no EU military, just that of all members which makes it fragmented and in many cases is their military isn't in the best condition. Also China wouldn't declare War as it doesn't recognizance Taiwan, i.e. they would instead "use military force to attack rebels and terrorists" or something like that).
That's a temporary advantage for Taiwan, and pretty much their only one.
A silicon atom is only around 0.1nm wide, so the end of scaling is coming up like a brick wall. We've got maybe a half dozen nodes left.
After that, industrial espionage, pumping up SMIC or some other new Chinese domestic equivalent at the time, and literally just leaking info publicly so the EU, US, and ROK are viable replacements once chips become truly a commodity will cut the dependence on Taiwan. At that point it's not worth facing China's nukes to tell them that they can't have Crimea^H^H^H^H^H^H Taiwan.
That's still something like a hundred thousand to a million times smaller that what we can actually fabricate, right?
That being said the future never ceases to surprise.
This is the American dream.
But no, China is not that stupid. Sure, they want Taiwan back, but they will not declare war and create global instability right in their backyard. Only stupid people would do this, and the Chinese are not stupid. They are in a marathon. They see the goal in 30, 50, 100 years. They will not give this gift to the American government.
Never underestimate emotional motivations.
P.S., not saying that China will attack Taiwan, just not ruling it out.
Removes the option of a painless transfer of power so that the US is still geopolitically interested in a independent Taiwan.
A better idea is to give a US passport to every TSMC employee NOW (exempt them from having to hold a green card and live in USA for 5 years first). And change the law so that US citizens residing overseas with no US-sourced income are exempted from filing and paying taxes.
Other countries that wish to have leading edge commercial fabs, e.g. Germany or Netherlands, should compete with USA and try to get their passports to TSMC employees first. Tell them your country does not tax citizens on overseas income, and like Taiwan, has universal healthcare, high-speed rail, and gun control. Netherlands can also advertise that TSMC employees likely already have some Dutch friends at ASML.