For a company worth $430bn that straddles one of the world’s most dangerous geopolitical flashpoints, there is something endearingly unflustered about Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Both America and China covet its unmatched ability to make advanced chips. It’s a far bigger supplier to the former than the latter, but if either superpower, through economic pressure or brute force, fully stifled its independence, the fallout would be immense. Many of its fabrication plants are on the west coast of Taiwan and perilously exposed to a Chinese invasion across the Taiwan Strait. Yet it refuses to be panicked. “If there is a war then, my goodness,
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