Hsinchu, Taiwan – A crane bird flies across a silent rice paddy, the water slowly trickling in the background. It is a tranquil and stereotypical image of an East-Asian countryside. Little seems to suggest I am just a few kilometres removed from one of the hearts of the global economy. This is Hsinchu, a small city close to Taipei in Taiwan. It is what you could literally call the Silicon Valley of the world.

Despite Intel's recent woes, I didn't expect to see CEO Pat Gelsinger joining 15,000 or so of his colleagues being shown the door. Gelsinger is a storied engineer and business success who laid down an exhaustive rescue plan when he took the helm of the beleaguered chipmaker in 2021. It was never going to be a quick fix, given the company's long legacy of missteps. Gelsinger may be the public face of Intel's current malaise, but the problems started long before his tenure and will likely keep going. Gelsinger was tasked with addressing almost two decades' worth of bad decisions, all of which have compounded.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics have discussed building major new factories in the United Arab Emirates in coming years to help satisfy soaring demand for artificial intelligence computing, the Wall Street Journal reported. Executives from TSMC, the world's largest chipmaker, have visited the UAE recently to discuss building a plant complex that could rival the company's advanced facilities in Taiwan, the newspaper said Sunday, citing people familiar with the interactions. South Korea's Samsung has also sent emissaries to the Middle Eastern country recently to talk about major new operations there, the Journal said, citing separate people with knowledge of the company's strategy.

Whether the topic of the day is Chinese spy balloons or American AI breakthroughs, Washington and Beijing are increasingly seeing world events through the lens of a "tech war." This ever intensifying rivalry is usually framed as "America vs. China," but that misses a key point: America is not alone. America's greatest competitive advantage over China is not wealth or weapons, but the fact that America has a lot of close friends, and China has none. In fact, The only country that has signed a treaty to support China in the event of a war is North Korea, an impoverished pariah state that deliberately schedules nuclear tests and missile launches to embarrass China during high-profile diplomatic summits. Treaty or no, few would describe China and North Korea as friends.