Reliance on the island for AI chip production puts it among America’s top foreign policy interests.
Implicit in this view is an assumption that Taiwan simply doesn’t matter that much to America—that it makes little difference whether our imports from the island come from “China” or “Taiwan,” and that we can eventually replace Taiwan as a trade partner anyway. This is the main reason anyone would doubt Washington’s determination to assist Taipei in thwarting a Beijing attempt to exert control over the island democracy.
The AI boom changes that calculation in several ways, as crystallized in Anthropic’s public offer. First, it is now obvious that Taiwan’s manufacturing capacity is essential to America’s ability to remain in the lead on AI.
Beijing’s leverage vis-à-vis Taiwan always rested on the notion that the island was too small to be worth a significant expenditure of U.S. resources to defend. Taiwan has now become too important to a leading U.S. industry for Washington to ignore.
Anthropic’s public offering and the broader AI boom create a compelling new “why” for American deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Now we wait to see what “how” Washington devises.