Taiwan is the most important spot in the world for artificial intelligence.

All of NVIDIA's AI chips, they're made right here on the island.

So, no Taiwan, no AI.

But Taiwan is more than just a microchip factory, it's the beating heart of the wider AI ecosystem.

Taiwanese companies are estimated to manufacture 90% of those AI servers today.

But that dominance faces a looming threat.

China sees Taiwan as part of its territory and has become increasingly assertive.

And so the future of AI has become intertwined with the security of Taiwan.

Taiwan is really an engine that's driving AI.

So it's important that Taiwan stay safe and stay what it is today if we want to keep AI moving forward.

So, how can Taiwan's tech industry adapt to this precarious landscape, and what does it mean for AI?

Back in the 70s, Made in Taiwan had this image of cheap toys or things that break.

But the government really wanted to push the island forward in a more high-tech way.

It saw potential in chipmaking and technology, investing heavily in the 1980s and building a top-tier talent pool.

The STEM-related degrees are considered relatively prestigious in Taiwan as opposed to other degrees.

Then, with this big pool of engineers, there's also a lot of entrepreneurship.

Taiwan became a global leader in efficient mass manufacturing, with factories both at home and in China.

And out of that, Taiwan's Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, was born.

Today, its scale and cutting-edge technology are unrivaled.

And its partner right from the beginning?

NVIDIA, whose specialized chips are at the forefront of artificial intelligence.

Please welcome to the stage, NVIDIA founder and CEO, Jensen Wang.

TSMC manufactured NVIDIA's chips from the start.

That helped NVIDIA grow, and obviously that's helped TSMC grow.

Taiwan is the home of our treasured partners.

And our partnership has created the world's AI infrastructure.

Just as TSMC has been there since the start, so too have the Taiwanese companies supplying vital hardware components.

Once used to power PC servers, they've evolved to meet the demands of AI.

So what goes into an AI server?

Of course, you have to start with the chip, then the chip goes on to a motherboard.

There's a lot of power modules that are in there.

You'll have what we now call liquid cooling systems.

And then that goes into a server, and a server rack, and tons of these.

Rows and rows and rows of these will create our chat GPTs of the future.

Oh, I forgot to say, and Taiwan makes all of this.

If you want to do the shopping in Taiwan, you can shop pretty much every product, every component, for that reason.

There's always some supplier that can fulfill your demand.

Asia Vital Components, or AVC, is one such company in the AI supply chain.

It's worked with NVIDIA for more than two decades.

Specializing in heat dissipation, it pivoted its R&D from traditional cooling solutions like fans to liquid cooling, which better suits the power-hungry and heat-generating AI servers.

They're basically using water or coolants to use the pipe attached to a certain area, like a component, so they can conduct heat very efficiently out of that chip.

Right now, 90% of thermal-related spending for data centers is on air cooling, with liquid cooling at just 10%.

But as AI servers grow, liquid cooling could soar to 30% by 2028.

An NVIDIA NVL72 server, which is the highest tech today, is about $3-4 million.

A small component can hold back that AI server from getting shipped if you don't have it, because you have to cool it, otherwise it'll melt down.

And so a lot of these, as Jensen calls them, unsung heroes, companies that most of us have never heard of, these are the key companies in the AI revolution.

Driven by an innovative spirit, AVC pursued Amazon as a customer and set up shop right in front of their office in Seattle.

Their persistence paid off, and shortly after landing Amazon as a customer, Microsoft followed suit.

With its small size and efficient high-speed rail network, Taiwan continues to lure the big tech companies.

Most of the major tech companies doing AI computing today, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, they all come to Taiwan because they can meet all of the partners really quickly and easily.

Since 2023, Taiwan's AI-related exports have overtaken China's, a reflection not just of its growing importance in the world of artificial intelligence, but also the frosty relationship between Washington and Beijing.

The US and China are engaged in almost a tech war, and so the US has banned from 2022 a lot of AI chips from getting shipped to China.

That means a lot of these AI servers that would have been built in factories in China are being built either in Taiwan or in other manufacturing facilities that Taiwanese companies own.

But with the majority of these AI chips being shipped to China,

But with the majority of AI technology concentrated on this island, the ever-present risk from neighbouring China concerns all those who depend on it for their computing needs.

China has carried out what it says is a mock air blockade of Taiwan using jets carrying live ammunition.

National unity is inevitable in history.

People on both sides must work together.

They are determined, whichever way possible, however long they have to wait, to bring Taiwan into the fold and be part of the People's Republic of China.

With so much at stake, TSMC and Dutch company ASML can now render their manufacturing plants inoperable should an attack occur.

So essentially this is a kill switch.

It underscores just how concerned they are about China getting hold of these most sophisticated machines.

Although an invasion remains unlikely, a war could severely damage the global economy.

Bloomberg Economics estimates it would knock out the semiconductor supply chain, delaying any advancements in AI and have a $10 trillion impact on global GDP.

That would dwarf what the war in Ukraine, COVID pandemic and global financial crisis have each cost.

To further mitigate this risk, Taiwanese companies have begun diversifying their manufacturing operations abroad to places like Mexico and Southeast Asia.

TSMC has broken ground on new facilities in Arizona, Japan and Germany.

They realise that they can't only stay in Taiwan, although Taiwan is still the lion's share of production.

The US has also passed the CHIPS Act, offering incentives to bring semiconductor manufacturing back home.

From a risk management perspective, pretty much all the clients would like to think about how to reduce the reliance, but the reality is that it takes time.

And so, as we set sail into an AI-powered future, the technology and global stability remains anchored to Taiwan.

Years later, maybe manufacturing can build up in other regions of the world, but that's going to take a long time.

Replicating Taiwan in the short term is impossible.

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