While I completely agree, there might be something else, i.e. the elephant in the room. While having TSMC factories in the USA is great for everyone, it's not ideal for Taiwan as a state. Therefore it's in the best interest of Taiwan to prolong the current situation where the whole world depends on TSMC factories located in Taiwan, and not anywhere else.

TSMC Taiwan is keeping their leading-edge nodes in Taiwan with a 3-4 year delay, which appeased the Taiwanese public/officials.

The bigger issue is that China might catch up to TSMC USA fabrication by the time that they actually start fabbing due to all these delays and China will have a superior chip capacity, making the defense aspect completely moot.

> Making the defense aspect completely moot

The biggest defense aspect (for the US) is preserving supply in the face of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, not beating China in chip capacity?

I would not be opposed to the gov subsidizing 50% of salaries of chip manufacturer salaries to achieve this.

It's a crucial part of industry growth and military superiority. We have some of the top-tier minds for chip design, we need top-tier manufacturing.

Nvidia/TSMC has already proven that hardware superiority is a huge advantage. We absolutely need it.