The government of Taiwan realized that their semiconductor industry might be the one thing that the US would be willing to go to war with China over to protect. So the government has invested heavily in ensuring they maintain critical mass in semiconductor expertise, typically by investing heavily in university education and research in related engineering fields. Computer/electrical/materials engineering is pretty much the default major everyone gets funneled into without capacity limits since at least the 70s.

For example, my parents and all their friends weren't well off enough to afford private university, but majors at public university were limited by the government based on projected need with slots offered to only the highest test scores. They couldn't test high enough to secure a public university slot for accounting, art, architecture, education, medicine, and trades such as automotive repair or plumbing. So they all ended up with computer science and engineering degrees. Fully paid for by the government.

They basically treat the semiconductor industry like how the US treats its defense industry.

I have long held the opinion that education should be part of national defense.

I think is a good example of what happens when you do that.

There's a fairly commonly held view that improving education access means giving people more ways out of poverty and therefore less people choosing armed forces as their career.

It seems intuitive to me that as war technology progresses, number of humans becomes less of a factor in military strength, but I know so little about this area that I couldn't guess how greatly alternative educational opportunities impact military applications, nor at what point in the past/future the scale might tip between wanting policies that push more into armed forces vs. no longer being so important (and I assume it would be different for different countries, too).

But I do believe good, free education should be a key part of any country, regardless of whether it helps national défense or not. If that drives up the cost of recruiting people to the armed forces then fine - I'm no fan of them in general, but if people are going to risk their lives potentially in wars then it shouldn't be because their choices were limited to that vs a life of poverty.

Interesting how they invert the qualifications for the disciplines versus US universities. It makes a lot of sense for a centrally-planned education system to force higher admission requirements for disciplines with less rigor and lower job demands. I have a suspicion that the US college system would implode for lack of willing customers and greatly reduce rigor to pablum. It’s basically a babysitting service here. It also makes it clear that pursuit of some measures of prestige reduce effectiveness of a system.

I vaguely recall a John C. Dvorak column (yes, I am too lazy to look it up) from the 1990s (maybe?) concerning a trip to Taiwan where he wondered if they were doing an experiment to see what would happen if everyone got a degree in electrical engineering.

Took me a minute, but it showed up in Google books:

https://books.google.com/books?id=C6VFJIbxX7MC&lpg=PA71&ots=...

I started going to the Super Computer/HPC confs here in the USA over the last few years and it was shocking how few American companies are there with impressive hardware engineering. Maybe the Japanese/SKOrean/Taiwanese companies showing up are the Dell/IBMS of those countries and I'm just not familiar with the names but walking around the conference always gives me this feeling that the USA is lagging behind or sitting this one out. The majority of companies I see are the usual hardware conf goers; IBM/HP and then a bunch of Gov/NSA/DOD groups on the USA end with a few universities. On the AIPAC end tons of what I feel like are small hardware companies doing cool bleeding edge nvmeoF/arm/fpga stuff, TONS of universities with really cool looking projects, etc.

But there is nothing to be set out. Either you play and win or you have already lost by not playing.

The only chance to sit it out would be a giant technological leap as in quantum computing, I just don't see that leap.

Look up Morris Chang. The man's a visionary and the single reason why Taiwan still exists as a sovereign nation.

They're not crippled by shortsighted management.