The expert added that there was concern in Taiwan regarding US President Donald Trump's recent visit to China. There, Trump raised the issue of American aid for Taipei in a conversation with the President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping.
According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Xi warned Trump that the Taiwan issue, if not properly resolved, could lead to conflict between China and the US. Beijing considers democratically governed Taiwan as part of the People's Republic of China and seeks to take control over it. The US is the largest arms supplier to Taiwan.
Trump said after the visit that Xi had asked him whether he would defend Taiwan. At the same time, the US president suggested that he had not yet made a decision on further arms supplies to the government in Taipei. He previously described the matter as a “good negotiating card” ahead of talks with Xi.
Trump will not sell Taiwan
Ippolito assessed that – despite emerging concerns – Trump “will not sell Taiwan before the elections” and “for now, everything will remain the same.” In her opinion, Xi is also using Taiwan as a bargaining chip, and the Chinese are not planning an invasion in the near future.
— Taiwan's best protection is chip technology and artificial intelligence, because the world cannot function without them. If something happens to Taiwan, the world will collapse, she added.
The key to domination
The importance of the Taiwanese semiconductor industry for the US was recently written by Hudson Institute think tank analysts Alexander Benard and David Feith in the Wall Street Journal. Experts assessed that Taiwan is “the key to dominance in the field of artificial intelligence” and “the factory floor of American leadership” in this field.
“AI will shape economic growth, military superiority, medical innovation, intelligence gathering and geopolitical influence. But America cannot win the AI race if it treats Taiwan as a bargaining chip. For the foreseeable future, Taiwan's autonomy is a prerequisite for US dominance in AI,” they wrote.
The authors pointed out that the Taiwanese company TSMC produces approximately 90 percent. the most advanced chips in the world. There is also infrastructure in Taiwan that cannot be replaced in the short term, allowing for further processing and packaging of integrated circuits. This means that the latest Nvidia semiconductors, manufactured at TSMC's new factory in Arizona, must first be shipped to Taiwan to become useful AI systems, they stressed.
“A country determined to win the decisive technology race of the century cannot allow its main rival to control the industrial base on which the race depends,” they concluded.
Ippolito works at the National University of San Martin (USNAM) in the Argentine province of Buenos Aires. He is currently in Taiwan, where he is a guest lecturer in the department of international studies at National Chengchi University (NCCU) in Taipei.
