Eyck Freymann

problem would not be Taiwan.

It would be the defense of Japan and South Korea and the homeland.

And I think China is treading more cautiously, which suggests they think they have more work to do.

And it's partly because it's hard to know when they're ready, when it's stuff that they can't count.

The CCP is good when it's things that you can count.

Well, if there is any kind of kinetic fight, which is bullets and missiles flying over Taiwan, TSMC's fabs get taken off the board.

Neither side, if things get hot between the US and China, neither side is going to let TSMC's facilities fall into the hands of the other.

And that by itself throws the world economy into recession because there's no strategic reserve of chips.

There's no backup facility.

TSMC makes 90% of the advanced semiconductors, but 99% of the advanced NVIDIA GPUs that are training the frontier models.

So bye-bye AI, goodbye NVIDIA and open AI and Microsoft and the whole tech trade that is holding up the US economy and the US stock market.

So that by itself

is a potential financial shock, which could mean not only a recession, but a Lehman Brothers-type moment that could lead to financial contagion, unless we swoop in and do something about it.

But then, obviously, if the US and China are at loggerheads over Taiwan, even if they're in a crisis short of war,

And TSMC continues to produce.

There's a risk that markets front run the crisis because if I'm an investor and I'm heavily invested in tech and it looks like the U.S.

and China are going to the brink, I don't want to be the last one to liquidate my positions in China or in TSMC or for that matter in South Korea.

So you could potentially get a moment where in the heat of a crisis, the U.S.

government and the

and Beijing too, they lose control of events because the markets get a vote and the financial shock comes before the first shots have been fired.