Semiconductors

Saturday

Jordan McGillis

How Iran could end the AI boom

While Americans anxiously watch the price of gasoline tick higher as the war in the Middle East squeezes the global oil supply, the conflict has highlighted another energy vulnerability that could prove just as costly: Taiwan’s dependency on foreign natural gas. At first blush, energy issues an ocean away seem peripheral to American interests. They are anything but. Though the effect on the American economy won’t be immediate, energy insecurity in Taiwan is a looming disaster. Qatar, the source of 30 percent of Taiwan’s natural gas, has been effectively bottled up The reason is that AI – in fact, virtually all modern computing – is highly reliant upon the steady production of semiconductors in the world’s only true hub, Taiwan.

Semiconductors

Tuesday

Ross Clark

Is the AI boom already over?

Is artificial intelligence a flash in the pan? Is the boom in tech shares, which exploded with the rise in public awareness of AI, doomed to go the way of other investment bubbles over the centuries? The answer to the first question is almost certainly no, and the answer to the second very likely yes. Investment bubbles do sometimes involve assets which have little intrinsic value, yet it is remarkable how often they begin as an entirely rational reaction to some new invention or development – an invention which outlasts the collapse of the speculative bubble, as if nothing had happened. You only have to look at a share chart and you would assume that railways went out of fashion in the 1840s, when a mad speculative umbrella collapsed.

AI

Friday

Zoe Strimpel

Fear and complacency in Taiwan

On a recent trip to Taiwan as a guest of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I knew that war with an increasingly belligerent China is a daily possibility. Chinese ships are in constant circulation in the Taiwan Strait. Chinese aircraft unceasingly fly near the island, getting close to Taiwanese air space. Beijing’s increasingly threatening language about forced “unification” seems to bring a catastrophic attack closer. Genuine fear fluttered in the wake of Nancy Pelosi’s visit in August last year when China launched three days of drills that paid no regard to what they called the “imaginary” median line, which divides Chinese from Taiwanese territory.

Taiwan

Tuesday

Francis Pike

America’s chip war with China

There is a joke in Taipei that if China invades Taiwan the best place to shelter is in microchip factories, the only places the People’s Liberation Army can’t afford to destroy. The country that controls advanced chips controls the future of technology — and Taiwan’s chip fabrication foundries (“fabs”) are the finest in the world. Successful reunification between the mainland and its renegade province would give China a virtual monopoly over the most advanced fabs. Given that Xi Jinping has made clear his intention to take control of Taiwan by 2032, it is no wonder that the American government is worried about the concentration of cutting-edge semiconductor technology on the island.

semiconductors