Inside TSMC's facilities in Taiwan, where Fab 18 makes a quintillion transistors for Apple every six months, and an interview with Chairman Mark Liu
As the US boosts production of silicon chips, an American journalist goes inside TSMC, the mysterious Taiwanese company at the center of the global industry.
What changed since those interviews: analysts have flagged the concentration itself as systemic risk — TSMC makes roughly 92% of the world's most sophisticated chips — and TSMC has responded with its $165B Phoenix buildout, three Fab 21 phases plus packaging and R&D. The Wired visit shows what still stays home: Fab 18's quintillion transistors every six months feed an Apple relationship whose annual spend had grown to $24B by 2025.
First-order effects
Apple's dependence is made concrete: its flagship devices run on transistors produced in a single Taiwanese facility on a six-month cadence, so any disruption at Fab 18 lands directly on Apple's product roadmap.
Second-order effects
The US expansion shifts the battleground rather than the balance — Arizona gains packaging and later fab phases, but the leading-edge process Liu guards in Taiwan remains the irreplaceable node competitors and governments must plan around.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, the industry settles into a two-tier geography: politically visible US capacity for resilience optics and mature nodes, with cutting-edge output still consolidated in Taiwan — meaning supply-chain risk migrates less than headlines about new fabs suggest.
The trend: Chip manufacturing is diversifying at the edges while concentrating further at the leading edge, with customer scale — Apple above all — financing TSMC's grip on both.
This is one of the best article titles I've seen in a long time. Not exactly sure what to expect but looking forward to reading the latest from @page88. 'I saw the face of God in a semiconductor factory" https://www.wired.com/...
Brilliant, essential, deep, but also hugely entertaining writing from @page88, the gonzo philosopher/reporter who can do anything—including unpacking the global and cultural meaning of the all-powerful semiconductor industry in Taiwan:. https://www.wired.com/...
Keith has been a masterful diplomat when it comes to showing how trust and collaboration is all that matters — and how the Silicon Shield is still absolutely vital to the protection of democracy. https://twitter.com/...
Important look by @page88 @WIRED into the critical role trusted technology plays in securing freedom. Semiconductors are in everything with an on/off switch. It's the most important industry in the world. If we're going to protect our way of life from authoritarian threats, we...…
“Two qualities, Mark Liu tells me, set the TSMC scientists apart: curiosity and stamina. Religion, to my surprise, is also common. “Every scientist must believe in God,” Liu says.” - a beautiful piece that really feels reverence and awe for modern technology by @page88 https://tw…
“TSMC's simultaneous invisibility and indispensability to the human race is something that Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, likes to joke about. ‘Basically, there is air—and TSMC’”. https://www.wired.com/...
WIRED just published an article earnestly titled “I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory” & I don't know if I'm going to laugh or cry This is the same silicon fab that created the Superfund wasteland known as Santa Clara Cnty & burnt my hair off https://www.wired.com/..…
“Like money, silicon chips are both densely material and the engine of nearly all modern abstraction, from laws to concepts to cognition itself. And the power relations and global economy of semiconductor chips can turn as mind-boggling as cryptocurrency markets...” https://twitt…