Taiwan’s 100-Year Rise From Japanese Colony to Monopoly Producer of Microchips

Taiwan’s 100-Year Rise From Japanese Colony t...

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Writing Was Invented for Accounting and Scrawled on Baboon Bones

A three-inch baboon bone bearing twenty-nine deliberate incisions was pulled from a South African mountain range in 1970. It is approximately 43,000 years old, and microscopic analysis shows the notches were made over time with different cutting tools, meaning someone was trackin ...  Show more

It Took Russia 300 Years To Destroy the Final Pieces of Genghis Khan’s Empire

Before Ivan was the Terrible, he was a young tsar who had tried and failed to destroy the last fragments of Genghis Khan’s Empire in the Volga River Valley. In October of 1552, the 22-year-old Ivan stood outside the walls of a city that had raided, humiliated, and enslaved Russia ...  Show more

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Silicon Island (2022)
Throughline

In a world where computer chips run everything from laptops to cars to the Nintendo Switch, Taiwan is the undisputed leader. It's one of the most powerful tech centers in the world — so powerful that both China and the U.S. have vital interests there. But if you went back to the ...  Show more

The geopolitics of chips: Taiwan’s ‘Silicon Shield’
FT Tech Tonic

The global tech industry depends on Taiwan’s semiconductor chips and many believe the sector plays a key role in the island’s national security, helping stave off an invasion from mainland China. But as relations between China and Taiwan worsen, some countries are taking steps ...

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Taiwan is More Than Microchips and Tensions With China
Economics Explained

When people think of Taiwan, they mostly think of tensions with China and the fact that Taiwan is a major manufacturing centre for the world's semiconductors. But Taiwan's leaders actually made some big bets decades ago that are paying off now, with a GDP per capita roughly 3 tim ...  Show more

The race to secure semiconductor supply chains
Business Daily

Semiconductors hit the news during the Covid-19 pandemic, as issues with supply chains led to shortages of cars and soaring prices. Since then, geopolitical tensions have impacted the industry. 90% of the world's most advanced chips are made by TSMC in Taiwan. Now, countries all ...  Show more