The island is much more than a bargaining chip. It’s the center of the world’s most important tech stack.
Mr. Trump has rightly put AI dominance at the center of his national strategy. AI will shape economic growth, military advantage, medical innovation, intelligence collection and geopolitical influence. But America can’t win the AI race if it treats Taiwan as a bargaining chip. For the foreseeable future, Taiwan’s autonomy is a prerequisite for U.S. AI dominance.
AI doesn’t live in the cloud; it lives in fabs, packaging plants, memory stacks, substrate lines, testing facilities and server factories. AI has a geographic map. Its most important point, other than America itself, is Taiwan.
Taiwan’s importance to U.S. and allied economic strength may be without historical precedent: a relatively small island that anchors the world’s most important technology stack. Yet neither markets nor policymakers seem to appreciate the risk fully.