The shortage of production capacity highlights the global dependence on chip supply in Taiwan, and governments around the world are promoting the construction of their own semiconductor factories. However, in addition to the consensus that measures must be taken to ensure the security of the supply chain, disagreements between countries on related strategies are emerging. At the same time, people worry that government support may stimulate the over-construction of the highly cyclical industry of semiconductors.

Because more than two-thirds of the world's advanced computing chips are manufactured in Taiwan, countries are becoming increasingly uneasy. The governments of the United States, the European Union, and Japan are considering spending tens of billions of dollars to build advanced wafer fabs. Concerns about the supply chain of various countries have also prompted TSMC and Samsung Electronics to formulate plans to set up new factories in the United States, competing for US government subsidies that may be as high as US$30 billion or even higher. Intel announced this week that it plans to open its OEM business. In addition to two new factories in the United States, it will also build a new factory in Europe.

Dan Hutcheson, CEO of VLSI Research, said: "We are in a situation where every country wants to build its own fab. We are moving from global interconnection to vertical supply everywhere."

In Japan, Canon, Tokyo Electronics and Sike Semiconductor will participate in a 42 billion yen ($385 million) project funded by the government to develop 2-nanometer chips in cooperation with companies such as TSMC. Japan hopes to ensure that advanced semiconductors can be manufactured in the future, and plans to build a test line near Tokyo with the help of TSMC.

Even India, which has a weak chip manufacturing infrastructure, hopes to use its advantages as one of the global chip design centers to attract chip manufacturers with subsidy programs.

The situation in Europe is more complicated. EU officials are discussing with governments whether Europe should participate in the competition of advanced process chip factories or stick to the current strategy of focusing on niche chips. The former was promoted by Thierry Breton, the head of the European Union's internal market, and the latter was favored by the German government and many companies.

If the plans of countries around the world are passed, the semiconductor industry may return to the situation in the 1970s and 1980s, where countries regard chips as the key to their communications and national defense.

Dan Hutchison warned that the risk lies in the possibility of excessive global chip production capacity under government support, leading to price drops and a large number of factory closures. "From a taxpayer's point of view, this is really starting to become a problem. Are we really going to start another cold war?" he said.