In 2021, Taiwan, the undisputed center of global chip production, saw its reservoirs dry up.
It wasn’t a once-in-a-century event. It was a simple, brutal drought.
The worst in 56 years.
As the water vanished, engineers at TSMC, the world’s most critical semiconductor manufacturer, were forced to truck in millions of gallons of ultra-pure water just to keep the lights on.
They even drilled emergency wells, tapping groundwater normally reserved for farmers and communities.
That one dry season nearly strangled production of the very chips that power smartphones, data centers, vehicles, and AI clusters.
And it happened quietly, almost invisibly, with no bullets fired and no warning on Bloomberg.
Investors barely noticed. But they should have.
Because the next trillion-dollar melt-up in semiconductors will only go as far as the water supply allows it.
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