What does Taiwan live on? Why is a tiny island of 23 million people so important to China, inhabited by over 1.3 billion people? Why is it also for the world and also for Argentina?
The answer is condensed into an acronym: TSMC extension. Namely: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. The Taiwanese company is the world’s leading manufacturer of microchips (also called semiconductors) a vital component in cell phones, computers, airplanes, drones, weapons, submarines, cars, etc.
According to calculations by the Taiwanese government, Taiwan (thanks mainly to TSMC) controls 92% of the world market in high-complexity microchips (5 nanometers) and over 62% in normal semiconductors. The company, founded in 1987, has 573 customers worldwide, including major technology companies: Apple, NVIDIA, AMD and Qualcomm.
Literally, there would be no iPhone, Ipad and Mac without what TSMC produces, with which it has a contract to purchase all the new generation 3-nanometer chips that the company begins producing. One figure proves it better: every four dollars that enter the Taiwanese company, one is put in by Apple.
Covid has shown how irreplaceable Taiwan is on the international technology scene. Is that the strict quarantine measures adopted by the country, which were eased just a few days ago with the end of the mandatory 7-day isolation for all those who will enter the country, have influenced the microchip supply chain putting the sector in check.
A graphic example: without the chips produced here, no car could roll off an assembly linewhether in Germany, Brazil, Argentina or anywhere in the world.
Without natural resources, the country has only one capital: its intelligence. Taiwan is a country of exact sciences. With more than 150 universities and institutes (83 of the technological type) for its 23 million inhabitants, the salaries of teachers (73% of university teachers have a PhD) are among the best in the country together with the military and civil servants high-ranking level.
The country’s highest-denomination banknotes also go in this direction: the 2,000 New Taiwan dollar (equivalent to US$ 62) has the Formo-Sat satellite on the face, a symbol of technical progress, and the 1,000 New Taiwan dollar (US $31 ) illustrates a group of children studying geography on a globe.
Taiwan bases its knowledge industry on Science Parks, six mini-cities which concentrate hundreds of technology companies, universities, businesses and homes of people working in the six most thriving industries in the country: integrated circuits, precision machines, biotechnology, optoelectronics, computing and telecommunications.
Most relevant of all is the Hsinchu Science Parkknown as Taiwan’s Silicon Valley.
On the property, the gigantic buildings and factories of TSMC multiply, the mega-company that produces microchips which every year has a million dollar profit margin exceeding 50%, and also foundations of the most recognized brands on the techno planet, such as Apple. Acer, Kingston, Macronix and Logitech, among others.
Science parks in Taiwan appear to be impenetrable places in the face of possible war. Hitting them would mean a slap in the face not only for the small island claiming its independence from China, but for the entire planet, with incalculable losses in different types of industries. A cost that no one is willing to pay, not even Beijing.
A repeated comment about the island says there is two untouchable places in Taiwan. One is the National Palace Museum, where unique pieces of the Chinese Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and more than 650,000 works of art. “We are in the safest place in Taipei,” the tour guides joke.
The other: industrial science parks, where TSMC and other companies are based. All because of the immense dependence that the electronic industries of China and the United States have with Taiwan and its semiconductors.
For this reason, several international analysts agree that Taiwan has a “silicon shield” (silicone shield) that protects it.
“If the industry is affected in any way, it will have a global effect. The United States understands the value of Taiwan. While some politicians say concentration of the chip industry in one country can be a problem, that alone it will be a world problem if China launches a war against Taiwan”, Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu explains to Clarín.
But the country suffers from other threats that they attribute to China. It is a constant harassment on the web that translates into cyber attacks that, they say, come directly from Beijing and disinformation campaigns that spread through social networks.
Cyberwar and the only trans minister in the world
Audrey Tang She was a gifted girl who by the age of 6 was already a math genius and read classic literature. She is self-taught, she learned to program at the age of 8 by reading a book and without a computer. She draws a keyboard with pencil and paper and starts writing on it what she would have done in a notebook.
Daughter of a couple of journalists, at the age of 12 she discovered the Internet, dropped out of school and began to educate herself at home. Two years later, she dropped out of any kind of formal educational institution and started making decisions on her own how to learn and what to learn.
At 16, he founded his first startup, a Mandarin song search engine. At 18 she, she already turned into a hacker, she sold it and at 19 she jumped to Silicon Valley, California, USA, as a consultant to Apple and other tech companies.
At age 24, Tang changed her name from Autrijus to Audrey and came out as a transgender woman (although she describes herself as post-gender). Her mind-boggling life made him announce his retirement from private practice at 33 to address the public.
Today, Audrey Tang is Taiwan’s digital minister. At 35, she became the youngest minister in the country’s history and the first transgender person in the world to hold such a position. She and she is tasked with fighting a war with China that has been going on online for a long time.
“We are on the front lines, I am a digital minister, I would not speak in case of an attack because we face literally millions of cyber attacks every day,” says the hacker, the only official among all those she interviewed. clarion in Taiwan who have never worn a mask.
Sitting at the head of a conference in the brand new Ministry of Digital Affairs building, Tang speaks in frantic English about her goal in government: to build digital resilience.
“Resilience is the ability to recover quickly when adversity hits at any time, adapt quickly to changes through mechanisms of improvement, and learn from the experience of being attacked to strengthen one’s physical condition,” he defines.
─We are in an ongoing cyber war with China ─ repeat.
She says this in her every press appearance when asked about a possible attack. Their world is the digital environment and bellicosity is already a reality there, not at all virtual.
There are no tanks or missiles in that fight, the weapons are others: denial of service (DDoS) attacks. to obscure the websites of the Farnesina, the Ministry of Defense or the Presidency itself, as happened during Pelosi’s visit. But also campaigns disinformation and fake news in social networks or directly viral propaganda.
Taiwanese resilience also depends on connectivity. One of the fears on the island is that during a war the undersea fiber optic cable that supplies them with the internet will be cut. For this reason, the country is working to build a network of 200 satellites like those that Elon Musk put at the service of Ukraine in the midst of the war with Russia.
Tang points out that in crises, whether it’s an earthquake or a possible invasion, being connected to the internet is the primary tool for fighting disinformation.
One more weapon in a possible war, which is already fought every day in cyberspace.
Source: Clarin
