Important Takeaways:
- From Taiwan to South Korea to Silicon Valley, some of the most important nodes in the global tech economy are in disaster-prone places
- Considering that Wednesday’s quake was the strongest in Taiwan in 25 years — and that earthquakes of similar strength have killed tens of thousands of people or more in other countries — this could have been much worse.
- There was one other way in which Taiwan — and the world — avoided a worse outcome from the earthquake: the island’s all-important semiconductor manufacturing industry seemed to emerge largely intact.
- To say that Taiwan is important to the global tech industry is like saying oxygen is important to breathing. Taiwan as a whole is responsible for making 80 to 90 percent of the world’s most advanced computer chips — ones for which there is no current substitute.
- While earthquakes and volcanoes are just one threat to Taiwan’s semiconductor foundries, the better-known one is the People’s Republic of China.
- Should Taiwan’s chip foundries be destroyed in such a conflict, the damage to the global economy could be on par with the Great Depression.
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