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> One theory is that they did so because of concern over geopolitical risk

That isn’t a logical reason at all. TSMC’s risks and Apple’s risks are directly correlated and Apple is Berkshire’s largest holding

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Samsung and Intel exist and can serve TSMC clients for bleeding edge nodes. More fabs exist at older nodes. So if something happens to TSMC, there are options.

Though it would require significant work to move. And the alternatives may not perform as well. And there 100% would be supply shortages.

So overall pretty bad but I think Apple could survive it.

Samsung and Intel aren’t capable of making chips that either Nvidia or Apple use. Intel isn’t even set up to do contract manufacturing and their entire software and hardware design tool chain is not industry standard and is geared toward their own chipsets.

Intel’s first major announcement for its foundry is manufacturing 16nm chips for MediaTek. This was state of the art for TSMC back in 2013

https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/25/mediatek_chooses_inte...

https://anysilicon.com/semipedia/tsmc-16nm/

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