Taiwan’s greatest export isn’t chips

A reading guide to the four parts of the story.

The race for chips

  • Semiconductor sovereignty
  • The CHIPS and Science Act
  • Europe’s Chips Act
  • Japan’s rebuild
  • New fabrication plants
  • A Chip Odyssey
  • Beginning at the peak
  • The outcome, not the cause

Looking at the peak

  • A global identity
  • TSMC at the centre
  • What we can see
  • What we miss:
  • Years of investment
  • Institution-building
  • How cultures were built
  • The first chapter

The question

  • Back to the 1970s
  • The United Nations seat
  • The oil crisis
  • Labour-intensive industries
  • ITRI, 1973
  • Technology from RCA
  • The ability to learn
  • A return to Taiwan

What Taiwan built

  • Not ITRI
  • Not RCA
  • Not even TSMC
  • Institutions
  • Talent
  • Engineering discipline
  • Patient investment
  • A way of thinking