1. Fab Capacity has nothing to do with it. No one has committed to Fab Orders apart from Apple. It is politics and MSM Media decide to make an issue out of nothing.

2. Those Fabs are not leading edge and not target for the general consumer brands. The current target of 5nm in ~2024, a time when TSMC should be on 2nm GAAFET in their main Fab in Taiwan.

3. The only real reason is National Security, which is now being handled by Intel. These chip were used used and Fabbed by IBM and GF before GF's exit on leading edge.

4. 60% of TSMC's customers are US companies, but these US companies 's customer aren't 60% Americans. And not all Americans chips needs to be Fabbed locally.

> which is now being handled by Intel.

I don't think the DoD is willing to put all of it's eggs in that one basket that hasn't been performing lately. Particularly when the DoD sees massive amounts of edge inference being a key weapons component going forward and they need newer nodes than 14nm+++++++.

Hard to blame them.

AFAIK DoD has always had contract with Intel, IBM, GF for certain things Fab within US. And they rarely ( If ever ) use anything that is leading edge anyway. Their requirement are critically different to mainstream consumer usage where reliability of node is paramount. Samsung is also building a Fab in Austin which has an upgrade path from IBM ( now GF ) node. I dont see what TSMC has to offer in both National Security and Fab Production Business prospective.

That is of course, as you said unless both Intel and Samsung seriously messed up their plan.