Taiwan

“I mean, let's imagine China declares a blockade of Taiwan, which could very easily happen.”

“And we see the Chinese, I think they're trying to get themselves into a position where they could have a soft blockade, where, like, they could give the orders that any ship that wants to go to Taiwan first has to stop at a Chinese port and go through a custom…”

“And the Japanese see would see Chinese control of Taiwan as a direct threat to Japanese independence.”

“And we are going to train them up and they are going to be frighteningly good up until the point that that freedom involves Tibet, Tiananmen Square, and Taiwan.”

“Now there's three strategies. One is the economic quarantine that just suffocates Taiwan. One is an invasion that tries to end this in 96 hours, and the other one is they take over those three islands and look at the world and say, you're going to start a war …”

“Hundred percent.”

“A lot of the semiconductor supply chain intellectual property started in America, was developed in America, but then eventually went, went abroad. And that actually does give America some leverage. That's the basis for the chip controls. Like, why can America …”

“The island of Taiwan has less than three weeks, a big article in the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago on this, less than three weeks of energy reserves.”

“The amount of LNG, which is what Taiwan runs on is like, they have two or three weeks of it.”

“Chip companies, the design companies in the US do not plan for this. The contingency plan, excuse me, is something along the lines of like, well, we're all kind of screwed if China invades, which, OK, but like, there's no real plan there.”

“I think what's a lot more likely is some kind of soft power exchange like what happened in Hong Kong over time. I think realistically, that's a more Likely option, although I'm not saying Xi Jinping won't just invade like he absolutely will.”

“Chip companies, the design companies in the US do not plan for this. The contingency plan, excuse me, is something along the lines of like, well, we're all kind of screwed if China invades, which, OK, but like, there's no real plan there.”

“In terms of the big markets, yeah, there's a lot going on in Korea, Taiwan, Japan. I'm Probably more bullish on just in terms of a hunting ground to find great companies. The European markets are just tough right now, given the regulatory environment. They jus…”

“If you ask me, am I concerned about a hot conflict? I'm less concerned than most. But depending on the actions of the leaders, We may cause the hot conflict, and so I am of the opinion that we all must be more long-term minded if we can. We ought to have a mor…”

“We're 18 months from Taiwan not being an important moment of conversation the way it is today.”

“I, I've said this for years. I don't agree with Neil Ferguson on that point. I think that this is a nonsense issue. I think China and Taiwan will reconcile.”

“You look at a conflict over Taiwan, I think people say could be a 10 trillion dollar hit to the global economy. Like bigger than the financial crisis, COVID, anything. I think in some cases combined.”

“Now we're in a position where almost no amount of money is going to fix this problem for us, certainly on a timeline of relevance as it pertains to the risk that Taiwan has in twenty-twenty-seven.”

“That particular risk is one of the hugely cascading impact that would be felt across the portfolio because so much of the public and private markets are linked to the AI build out. There's no part of the portfolio that wouldn't be severely impacted by that.”

“About half of their electricity comes from their natural gas”

“I think the likelihood of an attack on Taiwan this year or next year or even into 28, but let me just do 26 and 27, absent some major provocation by Taiwan or some other third incident is very low. I'd put it at about where the prediction markets are, five per…”

“Taiwan is halfway around the world, as President Trump says, and 90 miles off the shore of China, and we're far away, and we have a lot of other things to worry about, so it's a little bit like Cuba. So inherently indefensible if China were seriously determine…”

“If you have that as a starting point, what is it in China's best interest to do? And I think it becomes obvious that the right thing to do would be to invade Taiwan.”

“China conducted joint sword. 20 24 B exercises in October of 2024. Surrounding Taiwan with coordinated military operations. In December, 25, Justice Mission 25 deployed over a hundred aircraft, 90 crossing the median line, 13 warships, and 27 rockets fired fro…”

“I think it is a safer equilibrium To have China dependent on Taiwan than to try to cut them off from Taiwan while we are dependent on Taiwan. Taiwan is 70 miles off the coast of China. It's not an ideal position in the world for us to have a dependency on it a…”

“What I think is most likely is that there is some sort of political coup or action. That destabilizes Taiwan in some way but doesn't actually, doesn't necessarily lead to an invasion, a full-scale invasion, and so sort of this is the best of the both worlds fo…”

“Even if the KMT wins, it's not like TSMC starts disobeying American export restrictions because The way American export restrictions are upheld is that Taiwan utilizes American banking systems, American equipment industries, and so they'll still have to uphold…”

“If that supply chain were to get screwed up or disremediated, we would have, like, a, Incredibly bad economy. On the order of, like, depression type economy.”

“The best place to live is undoubtedly Taiwan. The one word everyone says for Taiwan sounds not that impressive, but the word is convenient. Like, it is the most convenient place to live.”

“Taiwan is arguably the greatest Uber Eats market ever, because there, there's amazing options. It's all delivered by scooter, so it's always like 10 minutes to get dinner and things along those lines.”

“Like you had these models from Taiwan, that they actually built it and it worked well, that you can take the same basic premises of social media and reverse them. You can have the algorithm rewarding content, like the algorithm, first of all, in this Taiwan sy…”

“Over the weekend, you know, we saw, I think on Friday, the Financial Times reported, yes, there's a twenty billion dollar package in the works and it's something the Chinese don't want to have happen, and they have threatened to postpone or cancel Trump's visi…”

“I mean, I think that the Chinese helped Takeichi because their reaction to her comments in, in early November, which again, she said, she reiterated the Japanese position on sort of a Taiwan contingency, so to speak. She said it in a setting where it hadn't be…”

“The collective total amount of, like, CapEx that has been spent in Taiwan is, like, five hundred billion plus, right? Across the industry, across all the companies that are making semiconductors in Taiwan.”

“I think the standoff with China is going to be largely resolved. And I think president Trump's, when he makes his visit there, I don't know if you're going to go on that one. Sax, but I think it should be included in it, obviously because of the AI race. I do …”

“I believe that the greatest economic threat to the world economy, to the US economy, more than the Arab oil embargo that I lived through in the seventies when I was lined up with my parents to the, at the pump to do odd even days because of the oil embargo, th…”

“Right now I see the status quo persisting because the status quo works well for the Chinese, the Taiwanese and the Americans.”

“At the end of the day, if the models don't improve, we're absolutely screwed, and in fact, the US, like, you know, in another year, if this lasts another year, and then it happens, like, the US economy will go into a recession, like, straight up because of thi…”

“I know a lot of people's PMs are like, oh, you can't invest in TSMC because geopolitical risk, and it's like, no, dude, you can't invest in fucking Apple.”

“My thesis on this is because of the one child policy is going to really drop off China's population very quickly at a certain period of time. It creates this forcing function where in my opinion that the Taiwan scenario is more likely to happen because if they…”

“They would have said, no, you want to build in Taiwan, you're going to have to pay a 200% tariff. And nobody would have left.”

“What we're trying to do is have a portfolio of return streams that play out at different periods of time, different parts of their life cycle with different factors involved. So that we're not reliant on whether interest rates go up or down or the economy stre…”

“And it resulted in chip manufacturing being offshored and it all ended up on the island of Taiwan. And that's a huge national security issue for the United States, because now our whole supply chain for this critical resource is single threaded on Taiwan.”

“We have 90% reliance on critical minerals that are refined in China, on semiconductors that are manufactured in Taiwan.”

“A good example is, you know, there's nothing about Taiwan's, there's no special silicon on Taiwan's beaches. That make it the best place to fabricate advanced semiconductors. And so if you are expecting to just see everybody kind of having natural advantage in…”

“Huawei is still getting you know, wafers in Taiwan from TSMC through, like, shell companies, right?”

“Yeah, you have to look across the supply chain, but, you know, from a structure standpoint, we all want to keep reserves for, you know, those times but it's months, it's not years.”

“Look, I'm not saying that the Chinese won't move on Taiwan. I just think that the idea that they're just kind of one day, you're going to start to see the Chinese, ah, ships, Navy, Air Force, ah, landing on Taiwan. If you talk to most military people, they say…”

“This is an island country. That is, you know, seven days away from a total energy block, blackout if they get an oil and gas blockade from China so that they can't bring in ships to deliver oil and fuel.”

“In fact, I think Taiwan was the biggest investor in in China for a long time. I think next only to Japan.”

“The next big country market available to them is India.”

“If you look at Taiwan, there are thousands and thousands of companies supporting DSMC and all that, you know, and their sales may be 10,000,005 million a year.”

“If we keep the chip ban in place, here's my biggest concern. I think it dramatically increases the chances that China is forced to move on Taiwan.”

“Today, we have about zero percent of leading edge chips fabbed outside of Taiwan, right? Almost nothing in the United States.”

“With ASML. It's like, okay, this is like a, you know, sort of European company. And like, if we start to try to like sanction or slap fines on them, they'll be like, okay, great. The very limited number of machines we were selling to the U S we're going to sto…”

“Like the number of amphibian shipping vessels to actually take people from mainland to Taiwan. They have around 20, 20 or 30. They're actually capable of crossing that.”

“It is a longer, longer sales cycle for, you know, a hundred million dollar plus deal, but obviously worth the effort. This is so this is a commercial contract with a telco called Chungwa Telecom.”

“It will actually have a couple of different, you know, it will be able to provide service on the island, but it will also be able to be a relay to locations off the island in the case that all their fiber lines are cut.”

“When you look at the SEC filings for Nvidia and you add up all the revenue, it says that about 47% of the revenue goes to China, Singapore, Taiwan, I think it was.”

“I found the right factory in Taiwan. They can build a lot cheaper than, at the time, the labor costs in Japan. And, the components are all the same. At the same time, we've, we're vertically deintegrated, I use that efficiency, and we pass the saving to the co…”