Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly told officials that he slept “with one eye open” after he attended a classified CIA briefing on Taiwan, home to the company’s chipmaker TSMC.
US intelligence agencies have been worried for years that China may plan to invade the island, and the briefing warned that this could happen as early as next year …
China claims ownership over Taiwan, and has conducted military exercises that included practicing a full-scale blockade of the island, leading to fears that it was planning an invasion.
We suggested in 2022 that the lackluster global response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was likely to embolden China. US and UK security services gave the same warning a few months later.
Fears grew particularly intense as a result of a series of events in 2023, which we’re now learning led to a previously unreported CIA briefing attended by Tim Cook and two other tech CEOs. The New York Times reports that the US government was trying to persuade Apple to purchase chips from within the US and South Korea instead of from TSMC.
Frustrated, Ms. Raimondo asked William J. Burns, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, to give a classified briefing with the latest intelligence about China and Taiwan, said five people familiar with the briefing, which has not been reported.
In July 2023, three prominent chief executives, Tim Cook of Apple, Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Lisa Su of Advanced Micro Devices, entered a secure briefing room in Silicon Valley. Cristiano Amon, the chief executive of Qualcomm, joined by video. They listened as Mr. Burns and Ms. Haines said China’s military spending could mean a move on Taiwan in 2027.
Afterward, Mr. Cook told officials that he slept “with one eye open.”
9to5Mac’s Take
The prospect that China could invade Taiwan and seize control of TSMC is a very real one. The company has even made plans to remotely disable its chip fabrication machines in the event of an invasion.
The problem for Apple is there is nowhere else it can have it most sophisticated chips made: TSMC reserves its most advanced chip production processes for plants on its home soil of Taiwan. The company does have a number of other chip fabrication plants around the world, including the ones in Arizona, but these lag behind the smallest chip processes needed for the latest Apple products.
The risk is substantial, but there’s nothing Apple can do about it, no matter how hard the US administration may press.
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