Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly told officials he slept “with one eye open” after attending a secret CIA briefing in Taiwan, home to the company’s chipmaker TSMC.
US intelligence agencies have feared for years that China may be planning an invasion of the island, and a briefing warned that it could happen as early as next year…
China claims ownership of Taiwan and has conducted military exercises that included practicing a complete blockade of the island, leading to fears it was planning an invasion.
In 2022, we suggested that a lackluster global response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was likely to embolden China. The American and British security services issued the same warning a few months later.
Concerns have grown especially in the wake of a series of events in 2023 that we now learn led to a previously unannounced CIA briefing attended by Tim Cook and two other tech CEOs. The New York Times reports that the US government tried to persuade Apple to buy chips from the US and South Korea instead of TSMC.
A frustrated Ms. Raimondo asked William J. Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, to provide a classified briefing with the latest intelligence on China and Taiwan, said five people familiar with the briefing, which was not reported.
In July 2023, three prominent CEOs, Apple’s Tim Cook, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and Advanced Micro Devices’ Lisa Su, entered a secure meeting room in Silicon Valley. Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm, attached by video. They listened as Mr Burns and Ms Haines said China’s military spending could see a move to Taiwan in 2027.
Afterward, Mr. Cook told officials he slept “with one eye open.”
9to5Mac’s Take
The prospect of China invading Taiwan and taking over TSMC is very real. The company even planned to remotely disable its chip-making machines in the event of an invasion.
The problem for Apple is that it can’t get its most sophisticated chips made anywhere else: TSMC reserves its most advanced chip-making processes for plants on its home turf in Taiwan. The company has a number of other chip manufacturing plants around the world, including ones in Arizona, but they fall short of the smallest chip processes needed for Apple’s latest products.
The risk is significant, but Apple can’t do anything about it, no matter how hard the US administration can push.
Photo: Reuters/CC4.0
FTC: We use automatic income earning affiliate links. More.
