Machinepower Index / Dossiers / Taiwan
Rank 9–26 across the scoring rules tested. How this is tested
Taiwan
Chokepoint Leverage — For nations holding a step in the chain nobody can route around, which their government could switch off: trade access for compute, investment and protection, and stay irreplaceable.
How the Score, Potential and bottleneck cost are worked out: methodology.
The three layers
Energy, grids, data centres and silicon — the physical capacity to run models at scale.
Compute tracked by Epoch AI: Taiwan controls 1,200 H100-equivalents, wherever the sites are; hosts 600 for foreign firms. Hosted compute is shown, not scored.
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
| Layer | Sub-dimension | Basis | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Watts | Planning & Permitting | Assessed | 6.4 |
| Firm Power Capacity | Dataset | 5.2 | |
| Sovereign Compute | Dataset | 5.8 | |
| Hardware & Silicon Access | Dataset | 10.0 | |
| Weights | Frontier Model Output | Dataset | 3.0 |
| Alignment Capability | Assessed | 6.6 | |
| Regulatory Standing | Dataset | 6.9 | |
| Talent Density | Assessed | 6.5 | |
| Will | Policy Capacity | Dataset | 7.9 |
| Public Sector Adoption | Dataset | 6.9 | |
| Workforce Transition | Dataset | 10.0 | |
| Public Trust | Assessed | 8.0 |
Assessed marks a measurement we judged rather than took from a dataset: 4 of the 12 here.
Sources
TSMC fabricates the overwhelming majority of the world's leading-edge logic, with its 2nm node ramping since late 2025 — the physical substrate of every frontier training cluster.
View source →Taiwan's Energy Administration records 96.19% import dependence for 2023, making grid resilience the binding constraint on domestic compute expansion and its most acute strategic exposure.
View source →The National Center for High-performance Computing operates Nano 4 (#33) and Nano 5 (#155, 13.06 PFlop/s) — modest against Taiwan's fabrication dominance, reflecting the gap between making compute and owning it.
View source →Used for the workforce measurement. The IMF combines schooling, pay, labour mobility and active labour-market policies; the Index rescales it so the weakest of 173 economies scores 0 and the strongest 10.
View source →A cross-check for planning and permitting, which stays assessed: it scores building permits and electricity connections for ordinary firms, not grid-scale connections for data centres.
View source →Fossil, nuclear, hydro and other dispatchable plant; averaged with generation for firm power.
View source →On the register — what the world cannot get anywhere else
Taiwan holds one of the register's chokepoints: a position nobody else can route around, which its government could actually shut off. See the whole chain.
TSMC holds over 90% of production at the 3nm and 2nm nodes, and roughly two thirds of CoWoS advanced packaging. Every advanced AI chip, whoever designed it, is made on the island. Packaging is the weaker half — Amkor, ASE and Intel hold the rest and are growing, and capacity is moving to Arizona — but it has been the binding constraint on accelerator supply more than once. Taipei lists both as national core technologies; it has never restricted either.
TSMC →Bottlenecks
These hold Taiwan below its Potential. Its two lowest scores cost it the most: frontier model output at 3.0 (part of Weights) and firm power capacity at 5.2 (part of Watts).
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 being impossible to replace 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 nobody can replace, in exchange for security guarantees — is the one bargain no great power can decline.
Strategic play — Chokepoint Leverage
Keep the newest node at home while allies and rivals alike work to disperse it, harden the imported-energy grid the fabs depend on, and climb into models and applications on top of the silicon it makes for everyone, so the island's value rests on more than one shield.
Leverage — the nearest position. The island is the chokepoint — nine of every ten leading-edge chips.
Open Taiwan in the live Index → — every source behind every number, and the comparison tool.