An AI server assembly station is displayed at the Century Trading Corp. booth during the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan, on Sept. 10, 2025. I-Hwa Cheng / AFP via Getty Images
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned on Jan. 20 that the world economy faces a single, outsized systemic vulnerability because advanced semiconductor production remains overwhelmingly concentrated in Taiwan, and that a blockade or destruction of the island’s manufacturing capacity could trigger an “economic apocalypse.”
“I would say that the single biggest threat to the world economy, the single biggest point of … failure is that 97 percent of the high-end chips are made in Taiwan,” Bessent said during remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 20. “If that island were blockaded, that capacity were destroyed, it would be an economic apocalypse.”
