The Chain of Peace: Do Supply Chain Chokepoints Deter War?

The next war over Taiwan may be deterred not by aircraft carriers or nuclear arsenals, but by a Dutch lithography machine. ASML, headquartered in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, is the sole manufacturer of the extreme ultraviolet lithography systems required to produce the world’s most advanced semiconductors. Without its machines, the most sophisticated foundries on earth — including those of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) — cannot operate. This fact should be at the center of how the United States thinks about deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. Currently, it is not.The conventional wisdom holds that Taiwan’s semiconductor industry acts as a “silicon

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