Semiconductors
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has committed to increase its investment in the U.S. by a further $100 billion over the next four years, bringing its total investment to $165 billion. The additional money will be used to build three new chip plants, two chip-packaging facilities and a research and development center.
TSMC’s CEO Che Chia Wei (魏哲家) denied the move is politically motivated, despite consistent pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump over TSMC’s dominant market position. Instead, he said the move was led by demand for chips caused by the AI boom and supply chain cost cutting.
Trump said TSMC would be exempted from chip tariffs that might otherwise be imposed on chip imports. However, there remain some within his administration who say import duties could be placed on both the chips themselves and the electronic devices they’re used in, such as iPhones.
In January, Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs lifted restrictions on TSMC investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production overseas for the first time. But last week Minister of Economic Affairs Kuo Jyh-huei (郭智輝) said that TSMC’s most advanced chips will not be produced in the U.S. next year, and Presidential Office spokesperson Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) has reiterated that message.
TSMC announced that revenue was 39% higher in the first two months of 2025 compared to the same period last year, despite concern over tariffs and the performance of China’s DeepSeek AI model.
Military Tech
Taiwan’s military is looking to procure four types of drones from a variety of sources, with four specific defense tasks in mind. They include one drone with short-range strike capabilities and another capable of carrying and launching loitering munitions, weapons systems that can “loiter” over their target and then strike at the right moment. They also include drones able to take off and land vertically, and drones that can carry ammunition like missiles at low cost.
Taiwan’s air force and its National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology are testing an air-launched supersonic anti-ship missile called the HF-3 — to be carried by its F-CK-1C/D Indigenous Defense Fighters. Work on the missile originally began in 2022, but then paused.
Taiwan is to invest in additional security around its undersea cables, after a number of incidents where they were cut, likely by Chinese-owned vessels. Since 2023, 11 cables around Taiwan have been cut, although China has consistently denied sabotage.
Space Industry
French satellite service provider Eutelsat’s successful trial of a 5G Non-Terrestrial Network connection used Taiwan-made chipsets built by MediaTek inside its OneWeb low Earth orbit satellites. The 5G Non-Terrestrial Network provides wireless coverage to remote locations directly from space.
As part of looking at a range of different low-Earth orbit satellite providers for its own internet coverage, Taiwan’s Minister of Digital Affairs Huang Yen-nun (黃彥男) said at the end of February that Canadian companies and Amazon’s Project Kuiper are developing systems like those produced by OneWeb, which Taiwan currently has an arrangement with. Taiwan Space Agency is also developing its own domestic satellite systems.
AI
Hon Hai Technology Group, commonly known by its trading name Foxconn, has created a large language model that uses traditional Chinese. Using 70 billion parameters to learn and adjust based on data inputs, the model, known as FoxBrain LLM, was initially designed for internal use, but the company has suggested it will be made available as an open-source technology.
At the opening ceremony of the Taiwan International Orchid Show last week, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) said central and local governments will continue working to integrate AI systems into Taiwan’s orchid plantations. Of 4,600 known plant species in Taiwan, more than 400 are orchids. The exports are worth over $200 million per year.
Green Transition
Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢), deputy convener of Taiwan’s National Climate Change Committee, said this week that nuclear power is “very important to Taiwan.” It followed on from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) calling for the lifespans of existing nuclear reactors to be extended last month.
Nuclear in Taiwan has a contested history. In 2021 the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) held a referendum on whether the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) should be unsealed. Around 47% of voters voted in favor and 53% of people voted against. Prior to that, the DPP had been elected in 2016 under the promise of building a “nuclear-free homeland,” and although a 2018 referendum voted against entirely ruling out the use of nuclear power, two of Taiwan’s three existing plants underwent decommissioning. The third and final nuclear plant operating in Taiwan is currently scheduled for expiration in May.
Medical Tech
A Taiwanese research team working under Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council has developed a method of circularizing ribonucleic acid (RNA) — a molecule that carries genetic information — used in vaccines such as the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BNT. Linear RNA strands can be unstable and susceptible to degradation, circular strands less so. A press release from the National Science and Technology Council said the technique “not only enhances vaccine safety and efficacy but also paves the way for new opportunities in gene therapy, cancer treatment, and beyond.”
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