Part I · 3 min

Taiwan’s Greatest Export Isn’t Chips. It’s Capability.

Head-and-shoulders portrait of a friendly business writer in her forties, short dark hair, soft smile, looking at the viewer.
By Caroline · 2026-08-02

What watching A Chip Odyssey taught me about Taiwan—and why I think we’ve been asking the wrong question.

Close view of a silicon wafer held up to a window light in a clean room, rainbow sheen across its surface.
Caption and credit

Like many people, I have always thought of Taiwan’s success as a semiconductor story. The documentary tells that story exceptionally well, tracing Taiwan’s rise from an unlikely player to the center of the global semiconductor industry.

An old Taiwanese machine workshop in the 1970s, lathes and workbenches under warm hanging lamps, a young apprentice at work.
Caption and credit

Yet when the credits rolled, I found myself thinking less about semiconductors than about everything that came before them.

A person on a sofa at night watching a documentary about a glowing microchip
Caption and credit

But peaks don’t appear on their own.

They rest on foundations that have been built over years, often decades, and those foundations are usually invisible by the time the rest of the world notices them.

Keep the evidence within reach.

AI Elements keeps references beside the sentence they support. Its citation pill reveals a source title, a link and a short description; readers can move between several sources. [1, 2]

This example links to the documentation and implementation behind that interaction. The source notes remain available below.

Sources

1. Inline Citation — AI Elements

elements.ai-sdk.dev/components/inline-citation

Documentation for source titles, links, descriptions and carousel navigation.

Reviewed 11 October 2026