Speaker unverified: belief

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…Except this enormous company-ending risk. [01:09:09] TSMC’s last earnings call when asked what they thought about Taiwan’s sovereignty. I’m just like, what a world we live in. That’s an open question that an analyst can ask on an earnings call. What do you think about China invading your country? Brinton and I are not geopolitical experts at all. We spend a lot of time thinking about just the importance of TSMC to the world. I do think TSMC is top five most important technology platforms to the world. I think TSMC is more important than Apple. If Apple disappeared off the face of the earth, I actually think it would be painful for everyone that loves iMessage and FaceTime, but it really would not be as big of a deal versus if for some reason China moves to seize Taiwan or however it wants to play. Also, if TSMC’s fabs were shut down, then the western world be set back at least five years, if not 10 just in terms of technology progress. By the way, technology progress is driving most of GP right now. You do read about what’s happening with the auto sector and shortages. You’ve seen nothing. If you think the storage is from the way the auto guys manage their inventory and kind of the classic post-recession, [01:10:08] you always get, you go from there to what would happen if Taiwan’s sovereignty wasn’t questioned and TSMC stop making wafers for some period of time, I just think the impact on the global economy would be extremely painful. That brings you to a logical conclusion of hopefully the US and the west would move to protect TSMC at all costs or at least get the people out of there. I shouldn’t joke about if, but it wouldn’t be totally dissimilar to what’s happening in Afghanistan, where I think you just airlift as many TSMC folks out of there as possible in a short period of time. But then, you have no fabs. TSMC fabs a quarter of the digital chips made in the world now. It would be a lag of multiple years between when you get those people out and when you can actually start making wafers again. It’s a very complex topic. I think another way to think about this is just an ecosystem perspective. TSMC as a company is very valuable, but it’s not super valuable without ASML, [01:11:01], AMAT, and KLA. When you think about the ecosystem of semiconductors—and ASML is, of course, not valuable at all without TSMC and Samsung—there are these handful of companies, call it 15-ish, maybe more, that, if you think of them as one super company, which is kind of what they are is like a super organism, kind of like my bees as superorganism. It’s like an ecosystem you mean?…

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