Chipconomy: "Ken Griffin Warns Losing TSMC Chips Could Trigger a 'Great Depression:' They're in 'Every High-End Product'"

From Benzinga, July 10:

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Apex Symposium, Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin warned that losing access to Taiwanese semiconductor chips would cause the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) to decline by 8% within six months, triggering a modern “Great Depression” because Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (NYSE:TSM) microchips are embedded in “every high-end product” manufactured today. 

Griffin emphasized that a military escalation or blockade around Taiwan creates a dangerous “bad equilibrium” with absolutely no winners. Because Taiwan Semiconductor completely dominates the global supply chain for advanced silicon, a sudden disruption would paralyze core American industrial and technology sectors almost overnight.

“Boeing stops making planes in six months,” Griffin stated, illustrating the scale of the systemic vulnerability. “Most new cars stop being manufactured in six months. Consumer electronics stop being made in six months. Everything freezes.”....

....MORE 

Going back to some posts from 2019/2020:

"China deploys Sun Tzu to win the chip war" 

Taiwan's TSMC To Build A $12 Billion Chip Fab in Arizona

 ***

Although the article focuses on the Huawei angle there is a lot more going on here.
January 16 
As Concern Grows Over China’s Invasion Threat To Taiwan the U.S. Military Wants TSMC To Move Some Chip Capacity
And some thought I'd gone mad talking of chips and China and the island formerly known as Formosa (at least to the Portuguese).
p.s. can I start attending the Thursday soirées again? Please....
A couple posts from last summer. Frirst up, the intro to July 3's "China to Narrow Chip Gap With Taiwan Invasion"

Did I say invade? I meant trade.
I must have been thinking of China's Defense Minister last month saying "China must be and will be reunited".
With the Taiwanese elections coming up it's probably as good a time as any for Beijing to make some sort of move. Probably not invasion though. China will want to test its military somewhere, our guess is Vietnam, before tackling Taiwan. So probably some sort of fifth column action, cyber, electrical grid etc. And the people to do it are already on the island, I mean if the Chinese could get one of their spies into Dianne Feinstein's office while she was Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee (2009 - 2015), the guy was her San Francisco office manager, not, as reported, the chauffeur, if they could do that there is no doubt they have assets in Teipei.
So where was I?

Chips. For all their technological wizardry the Chinese are still having trouble making chips. Some of our links on that after the jump....

Chips: How China Is Still Paying the Price For Squandering Its Chance To Build a Home-grown Semiconductor Industry 
Should China ever invade Taiwan the TSMC fabs would be quite a prize.
We've looked at this oddity a few times, some links below....
Intel is known in some circles as Chipzilla but, truth be told, the appellation might more accurately belong to TSMC.

The Chip Wars of the 21st Century

While some people are bleating and tweeting into the ether about their political feelings, others are creating the technical container that will define, delineate, create, and constrict the future.
Them's the ones to watch out for.
Baaaa

 

And: 

"US mulls scorched earth strategy for Taiwan"
Ummm, have the Taiwanese weighed in on this plan?

From Asia Times, December 6:

US strategy to blow up Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs to deter China might do more harm than good.... 

April 2023 - Taiwan Quietly Urges U.S. To Chill On The "Invasion Risk To World Chip Supply" Chatter (TSM)

And last week:

As Clausewitz might have said, had he been born 200 years later than he actually was:

Chips are just war by other means.