3 articles
U.S. export controls aimed at leading-edge chips inadvertently created a pricing-power windfall in China's mature-node foundries. The mechanism: a deliberate policy line, state capital reallocation, and an unmodeled AI demand shock.
AI compute scarcity has migrated from fabrication to HBM, advanced packaging, grid access, and cooling. China is constrained upstream; the U.S. downstream.
A 30-day Taiwan Strait closure is not a theoretical exercise — it is a supply chain stress test. The AI chips are the most resilient in the short run. The boring chips break first. The actual gating constraint may be energy, not fabrication.