AI’s Single Point of Failure | Rob Toews | TED

The following statement is utterly ludicrous.

It is also true.

The world's most important advanced technology

is nearly all produced in a single facility.

What's more, that facility is located

in one of the most geopolitically fraught areas on Earth,

an area in which many analysts believe that war is inevitable within the decade.

The future of artificial intelligence hangs in the balance.

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company,

or TSMC,

makes all of the world's most-advanced AI chips.

This includes Nvidia's GPUs, Google's TPUs, AMD's GPUs,

the AI chips for Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla,

Cerebrus, SambaNova

and every other credible competitor.

Modern artificial intelligence simply would not be possible

without these highly specialized chips.

Little wonder, then,

that Time magazine recently described TSMC as,

"The world's most important company that you've probably never heard of."

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang put it more colorfully,

saying, “Basically, there is air ... and TSMC.”

(Laughter)

TSMC's chip fabrication facilities, or fabs,

the buildings where chips are physically built,

is located on the western coast of Taiwan,

a mere 110 miles from mainland China.

In this map, Taiwan is shown in orange and China is shown in green.

Today, China and Taiwan are nearer to the brink of war

than they have been in decades.

Many policymakers in Washington predict that China will invade Taiwan

within the next five years.

A China-Taiwan conflict would be devastating

for many reasons.

Aside from the heavy human toll,

one underappreciated consequence

is that it would paralyze the global AI ecosystem.

Put simply, the entire field of artificial intelligence

faces an astonishingly precarious single point of failure in Taiwan.

Amid all of the fervor around AI today,

this fact is not widely enough appreciated.

If you are working on or are interested in AI,

you need to be paying attention.

How did we get here and what can we do about it?

Let's start with a brief, whirlwind overview of the chip industry.

Semiconductors, or chips, are the most complex object in the world

that humanity knows how to mass-produce.

Making semiconductors requires the world's purest metals,

the world's most expensive machinery,

legions of highly specialized engineers

and atom-level manufacturing precision.

It is important to distinguish between two different types of chip companies.

First, fabless chip makers,

which design but do not manufacture their own chips.

And second, foundries,

which manufacture chips designed by other companies.

Almost every well-known chip company today is fabless,

from Nvidia to AMD to Qualcomm.

These companies do not produce their own chips.

Instead, they design chips,

and then they rely on foundries like TSMC

to actually manufacture those chips for them.

There are only three companies in the world today

that are capable of manufacturing chips

anywhere near the leading edge of semiconductor technology:

TSMC, Samsung and Intel.

Of those three,

only one can reliably produce the world's most advanced AI chips,

including chips like Nvidia's H100 GPUs.

That one company is TSMC.

As of this morning,

TSMC's market capitalization was 470 billion dollars,

making it the 13th-largest company in the world,

larger than ExxonMobil,

JPMorgan Chase or Walmart.

How has TSMC become such a dominant force?

The short answer is that powerful economies of scale

exist in the world of chip fabrication,

leading inexorably to winner-take-all dynamics.

Making advanced semiconductors requires tremendous upfront

and ongoing capital expenditure.

In 2021, TSMC announced that it would invest 100 billion dollars

over the next three years

to continue expanding its fabrication capabilities.

No other company in the world can justify that level of investment.

TSMC can, because of the sheer volume of chips that it produces,

far more than any other company in the world.

A related dynamic that helps explain TSMC's unassailable position

is what has come to be known as the TSMC Grand Alliance.

TSMC has invested heavily over decades

to develop deep partnerships with dozens of companies

across the semiconductor supply chain,

from software providers like Cadence

to equipment manufacturers like ASML

to chip designers like Nvidia.

In turn, these companies have developed their own products

in accordance with TSMC's road map,

leading to powerful lock-in.

In summary, a combination of economies of scale, network effects,

and unrivaled specialization have made TSMC irreplaceable

and have made the entire world deeply, precariously dependent upon it.

This brings us to the present, delicate geopolitical moment.

Last October,

the Biden administration took the dramatic step

of banning the export of all high-end AI chips to any entity in China.

The rationale behind these measures was clear.

To leverage US control

of the global semiconductor supply chain

as a choke point to handicap China's AI capabilities.

The US government is currently formulating expansions to this policy.

At the same time, the US is taking steps to reduce its reliance

on chip fabrication facilities located in East Asia.

In late 2022,

TSMC announced that it would invest 40 billion dollars

to build two new state-of-the-art fabs

in the United States, in Arizona.

The first of these two fabs is slated to begin production in 2025.

Bringing advanced chip production to US soil

will help mitigate the AI industry's absolute dependence on Taiwan-based fabs.

But the Arizona fabs will not solve everything.

Their production capacity will be modest,

representing less than five percent of TSMC's total global output.

And the most advanced semiconductor production capabilities

and technologies will remain in Taiwan.

So where might things go from here?

Let's briefly consider a few possibilities

on this three-dimensional chessboard.

Let's start with optimistic scenario.

Taiwan's central role in the global semiconductor industry

is often referred to as its “silicon shield.”

The basic theory is this:

because China depends so heavily on Taiwan for the chips that it needs

to keep its own economy running,

China will stop short of invading Taiwan and putting TSMC's production at risk.

And because the rest of the world is likewise so dependent on TSMC,

the United States and other powers will go to great lengths

to protect the island and defend its sovereignty.

Under this theory,

while China may continue to build out its military

and engage in cross-strait saber-rattling,

it will stop short of kinetic action against Taiwan.

But the silicon shield is just a theory,

not a guarantee.

What would happen if China were to move decisively to retake Taiwan?

TSMC's fabs would almost certainly be rendered inoperative.

It is conceivable that the Taiwanese, or even the US military,

would preemptively destroy the fabs

in order to prevent the CCP

from taking control of this valuable strategic resource.

Even if the physical buildings were to remain undamaged

after a Chinese invasion,

it is unrealistic that the CCP would be able to continue operating the fabs

to produce cutting-edge chips.

Keeping leading edge fabs running

requires ongoing and deep partnership

with organizations across the global semiconductor ecosystem,

as well as a steady inflow of materials, equipment and services.

These would be denied to an invading power.

Let me say this one more time:

if or when China invades Taiwan,

TSMC's fabs will, in all likelihood, go offline.

This will mean that no more Nvidia H100s

or any other cutting-edge AI chips

will be able to be produced anywhere in the world.

What would this mean for the world of AI?

After TSMC, the company best positioned to step up

and produce cutting-edge AI chips is Samsung.

Samsung is currently the only company in the world, other than TSMC,

that is capable of producing three-nanometer chips,

today's cutting-edge technology.

But Samsung's production capabilities are far inferior to TSMC's today.

In a best-case scenario,

it would take Samsung years to scale up

to TSMC's current AI chip yields and volumes.

This brings us to America's former chip champion, Intel.

It was hardly a decade ago

that Intel's chip-manufacturing capabilities were the envy of the world.

But in recent years, Intel has fallen behind.

The company struggled mightily in its transition to both ten-nanometer

and seven-nanometer node technologies,

even resorting to outsourcing some of its leading edge production to TSMC.

Under CEO Pat Gelsinger,

Intel aspires to regain its chipmaking supremacy

with an ambitious plan to leapfrog TSMC

and begin producing two-nanometer chips in 2024.

Whether this ambitious plan will actually prove achievable, however,

remains to be seen.

Before we despair too much,

let us note a couple encouraging points.

First, keep in mind that a considerable stock of AI chips already exists

in the world.

And even in a worst-case scenario, these chips would remain in use.

Second, while the most advanced AI chips, like Google’s TPUs or Nvidia’s H100s,

can only be manufactured in Taiwan,

there are many fabs around the world,

from the US to Europe to Israel,

that are capable of producing lagging-edge logic chips at scale.

Though they are far less powerful than today's leading AI chips,

these previous-generation chips could be used in a pinch

to support some AI computing workloads.

Ultimately, though, it would be devastating for humanity

to lose its ability to produce the chips

that power today's cutting-edge artificial intelligence.

Progress in AI would be profoundly disrupted.

Let us hope that diplomacy prevails.

(Applause)