The Chip Warriors
Moderator
In the late 1950s, thousands of Russian nuclear scientists were sent to China to help Mao Zedong build the A-bomb. When Moscow recalled them after a split in 1960, Mao sent song-and-dance girls to get the Russians drunk so their scientific notebooks could be copied secretly before they left.
The Biden administration's "US persons" rule dropped a proverbial A-bomb on China, effectively “recalling” American citizens working on advanced chip development in the country.
The rule not only affects the likes of Lam Research and KLA, which have recalled their engineers from Chinese fabs. American educated and trained Chinese are behind many of China’s chip start-ups, but now these “sea turtles” are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
A US-based Chinese entrepreneur tweeted that "China's semiconductor manufacturing was paralyzed overnight.” Similar to China, Taiwan’s chip industry is populated by American educated and trained engineers, the most famous being TSMC founder Morris Chang.
“The people in Taiwan that built the semiconductor industry, virtually all of them had some tie back to Silicon Valley… and were able to transfer this knowhow back to Taiwan,” AnnaLee Saxenian, professor at University of California Berkeley, said in the Silicon Shield 2025 documentary.
Some, like former TSMC R&D director and Silicon Valley resident Chiang Shang-yi, later expressed regret about working for rivals in China. Under the new rule, such a move would be problematic.
In effect, the “US persons” rule will indirectly benefit Taiwan by curbing China’s poaching of its chip talent. Before China’s strict Covid-19 controls closed its borders, an estimated 10 per cent, or 3,000, of Taiwan’s semiconductor R&D engineers had gone to work in mainland China, lured by generous salaries and free housing.
Separately, the Taiwan government has been trying to beef up laws to prevent “illegal” poaching of its top chip talent, but that effort just got a helping hand from the A-bomb dropped by President Biden. Twitter: @craigaddison
The Biden administration's "US persons" rule dropped a proverbial A-bomb on China, effectively “recalling” American citizens working on advanced chip development in the country.
The rule not only affects the likes of Lam Research and KLA, which have recalled their engineers from Chinese fabs. American educated and trained Chinese are behind many of China’s chip start-ups, but now these “sea turtles” are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
A US-based Chinese entrepreneur tweeted that "China's semiconductor manufacturing was paralyzed overnight.” Similar to China, Taiwan’s chip industry is populated by American educated and trained engineers, the most famous being TSMC founder Morris Chang.
“The people in Taiwan that built the semiconductor industry, virtually all of them had some tie back to Silicon Valley… and were able to transfer this knowhow back to Taiwan,” AnnaLee Saxenian, professor at University of California Berkeley, said in the Silicon Shield 2025 documentary.
Some, like former TSMC R&D director and Silicon Valley resident Chiang Shang-yi, later expressed regret about working for rivals in China. Under the new rule, such a move would be problematic.
In effect, the “US persons” rule will indirectly benefit Taiwan by curbing China’s poaching of its chip talent. Before China’s strict Covid-19 controls closed its borders, an estimated 10 per cent, or 3,000, of Taiwan’s semiconductor R&D engineers had gone to work in mainland China, lured by generous salaries and free housing.
Separately, the Taiwan government has been trying to beef up laws to prevent “illegal” poaching of its top chip talent, but that effort just got a helping hand from the A-bomb dropped by President Biden. Twitter: @craigaddison
