Machinepower Index / Dossiers / Taiwan
Taiwan
Chokepoint Leverage — Own a stage of the stack the superpowers cannot route around, and convert indispensability into access, investment and protection.
Score = the average of Watts, Weights and Will, minus a bottleneck penalty of 0.2 × the weakest axis's distance from 10. Potential = the average alone. The gap between them is what fixing the bottleneck is worth.
The three layers
Energy, grids, data centres and silicon — the physical capacity to run models at scale.
Models, alignment capability, standards influence and the talent that produces them.
The capacity to wire AI into the state and the economy while holding public consent.
Where the score comes from
Each axis is the straight average of its four measured sub-dimensions. Nothing is weighted inside an axis; every number below is a rubric-judged 0–10 assessment against published sources under twelve months old.
| Layer | Sub-dimension | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Watts | Planning & Permitting | 6.4 |
| Firm Power Capacity | 5.5 | |
| Sovereign Compute | 5.8 | |
| Hardware & Silicon Access | 10.0 | |
| Weights | Frontier Model Output | 3.0 |
| Alignment Capability | 6.6 | |
| Regulatory Standing | 6.9 | |
| Talent Density | 6.5 | |
| Will | State Procurement | 6.5 |
| Public Sector Adoption | 6.9 | |
| Workforce Transition | 6.6 | |
| Public Trust | 8.0 |
Bottlenecks
The weakest axis sets the penalty. These are the constraints that hold Taiwan below its Potential.
Assessment
Taiwan holds the single most consequential node in the global AI supply chain: TSMC fabricates the overwhelming majority of leading-edge logic. Its "silicon shield" gives it outsized material leverage, but near-total energy import dependence and the absence of sovereign frontier models leave its position leveraged rather than self-sufficient.
The art of the possible
Taiwan's upside is turning indispensability into resilience: energy diversification (LNG, renewables, storage) to harden the grid its fabs depend on, and capturing more of the AI value stack — models and applications — on top of the silicon it already makes for everyone else. The standing trade — silicon indispensability for security guarantees — is the one bargain no great power can decline.
Strategic play — Chokepoint Leverage
Own a stage of the stack the superpowers cannot route around, and convert indispensability into access, investment and protection.
The play is editorial, not scored: it names the game Taiwan's measured position supports. Eight plays run across the Index — Total Sovereignty, Strategic Autonomy, Chokepoint Leverage, Diffusion Advantage, Compute Rentier, Specialist Power, Sovereign Capital and Siege Autarky.
Open Taiwan in the live Index → — full provenance cards, source dates, comparison tool and CSV export.