HSINCHU, Taiwan — Hulking white factory buildings tower over the plush vegetation lining the road that snakes through this city, a place long known as Taiwan’s “Silicon Valley,” but increasingly identified as ground zero in a widening new Cold War between the United States and China.
More than 400 of Taiwan’s highest-level private tech firms are located in Hsinchu and several of America’s most iconic, futuristic and influential brands — including Apple, Intel, Microsoft and Lockheed Martin — are either deeply invested in and or heavily reliant on the advanced microchips made here.
“The clients come from everywhere,” says Scott Huang, a researcher at Hsinchu Science Park, whose most prominent operations are at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s top producer of chips used in everything from smartphones to F-35 fighter jets.