The West needs a strategic second source at all levels of thetechnology. IT does not necessarily have to be the best - just good enough. The problem is how to get there, and whom to chose as the lead partner
Whatever Intel says, its success has historically been due to "seizing the moment" as much as technical strategy*. Indeed, they have been quite explicit about how this worked in the early days. If IBM corporate had been serious about PCs and willing to put in the spadework neither Intel's processors nor Microsoft's operating system would have become dominant as they have.
I know nothing of Intel's current generation of semiconductor engineers, but it seems that Intel appear to have lost the technical edge that they once had; I'm not equipped to judge whether this is a matter of financial focus or the competition's technical superiority. One thing is clear: Intel has blown lukewarm and cold on foundry services over the years: is this really an activity Intel management could actually agree to be part of its long-term strategy? (yes, I know money talks, but...)
Many years ago, IBM made the "buy" decision for leading-edge geometries. However, they maintained their physics and device development teams to develop special-purpose devices. Recent announcements suggest that these teams are still fully competitive with the best in the field.
Global Foundries have somewhat floundered over the years. Part of this is clearly financial, but I believe that the way that they were formed may also have cut off the process development engineers from the device engineers - and I'm much too distanced from the reality to assess how deeply entrenched the consequent practises have become.
Both TSMC and Samsung both have highly competent teams. TSMC's business strategy has generated more investment money for semiconductors than Samsung's. Although in principle this need not be a problem going forward, TQC's comment strongly suggests that I am far from the only person who has been bitten by their historic inconstancy on foundry.
However, the bigger problem is that both companies operate in a geopolitically difficult region. If we are looking for insurance against the absorption of Taiwan, I suspect that working with Korea would only provide a modest breathing space if-and-when Taiwan is once absorbed.
I also suspect that both companies will feel slightly more secure with "the West" dependent on their home operations (I know I would in their positions).
So, in my view we need to "keep it local", and look at the structures that are most likely to lead to success. Clearly we need to learn from the Taiwanese, just as in the past they learnt from us.
Then. if we look at the semiconductor companies that were spun out of the old Eastern Germany, it appears that the ones that managed to "go it alone" are those that were formed around the advanced development facilities, rather than those set up for the volume production. Similarly, it seems Intel was strong when the first fabs at each node came from a dominant development base. At the moment the strongest development base appears to be at IBM, and the "natural" spin-off company for fabs developed by extended teams looks to be GF. All that is missing to make this happen is the strongly committed management and the finance.
It will probably take 14 years of government financial commitment and autonomous commited management commitment to catch up. The process could become self-funding after a few years, but the financier needs to understand the timescale - and fund consistently (!). However, there is at least an existence proof