This week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned about the over-reliance of global high-tech industry on Taiwan, calling the nation 'world's biggest single point of failure' as the lion's share of the most advanced processors are made in Taiwan, he told Fox Business (via SemiVision). He urged urgent action to distribute chip production across multiple friendly regions to avoid a catastrophic collapse if disruptions occur. However, in his rhetoric Bessent seems to forget about Intel.
"The single greatest point of failure for the world economy is that 99% of the high-performance chips are produced in Taiwan," Bessent said, according to Reuters. "They do a great job, they have a wonderful ecosystem, but in terms of risk management, I do not know whether it is 30%, 40%, 50% of our needs, we have got to bring back to the U.S. or our allies, whether it is Japan or the Middle East, and we are working on that every day."
