The Island That Runs the World: How Taiwan Came to Control 90% of the World's Advanced Chips

Oil has dozens of producers. Advanced semiconductor chips — the components powering every smartphone, every AI system, every modern weapons platform on the planet — have one.Taiwan.One island. 23 million people. 90% of the world’s most advanced chips. And right now, as the Iran war disrupts the energy supply lines that keep Taiwan’s fabs running, the fragility of the entire global technology supply chain has never been more visible.This episode tells the full story — from Taiwan’s deliberate government bet in the 1960s to turn itself from a textile exporter into a semiconductor superpower, to the founding vision of Morris Chang and the pure-play foundry model that nobody else had tried, to the extraordinary ascent of TSMC into the most critical manufacturing company in the history of human technology, to the geopolitical question now dominating the minds of every defense planner and tech executive in the world: what happens to the global economy if Taiwan’s chip production stops? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rejil.substack.com