WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- The United States would destroy Taiwan’s highly sophisticated semiconductor industry rather than allow it to be captured if China ever successfully overtook the island, according to Donald Trump’s former National Security Advisor.
“The United States and its allies are never going to let those factories fall into Chinese hands,” Robert O’Brien was quoted as saying at the Global Security Forum organized by the Soufan Center in Doha, Qatar.
The bulk of the world’s most advanced microchips are produced in Taiwanese facilities owned by TSMC. Gaining control of those plants would make China “like the new OPEC of silicon chips” and allow them to “control the world economy,” O’Brien said. “Now let’s face it, that’s never going to happen,” he said.
O’Brien drew a comparison to when Britain chose to destroy France’s storied naval fleet after the country surrendered to Nazi Germany, killing over 1,000 sailors in the process. He recounted how Winston Churchill, a noted Francophile, walked into the House of Commons “with tears streaming down his face because it was the hardest decision he made in the war,” but received unanimous applause.
“The Brits didn’t allow the French fleet to remain intact so that it could have potentially gone to the Germans and changed the balance of power for the battle of the Atlantic,” he said.
The idea of demolishing Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs, rather than leaving them in Chinese hands, has been floated before.
A paper published in 2021 by the US Army War College suggested the U.S. and Taiwan should plan “scorched-earth” tactics that could render Taiwan “not just unattractive if ever seized by force, but positively costly to maintain.”
The paper said the tactic could be done “most effectively by threatening to destroy facilities belonging to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the most important chipmaker in the world and China’s most important supplier.”
Bloomberg reported in October 2022 that there are “some former officials with ties to the Pentagon want the Biden administration to devise” a plan to destroy Taiwan’s chip factories.
The Biden administration has been taking action against China’s semiconductor industry by blocking exports of advanced technology needed to produce advanced chips. The U.S. is also rallying allies to join in on the sanctions and got the Netherlands also to restrict exports of semiconductor technology.
Taiwanese officials have said there is no need, however, because for various reasons China would not be able to operate the factories after capturing them.
“Even if China got a hold of the golden hen, it won’t be able to lay golden eggs,” Chen Ming-tong, director-general of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, said last October.