Kevin Kwok essay: How TSMC manufactured its own market via Abstract Warfare
kevinakwok · x · 2026-10-09
Kevin Kwok's new essay "Abstract Warfare: How TSMC Made Its Own Market" argues the most important tech companies don't just expand markets — they create them by attacking the abstractions their industries are built on.
- Before TSMC, chip companies were IDMs that both designed chips and owned fabs. Expensive fabs acted as moats that kept competition capital-based rather than innovation-based.
- Fabless designers had to rely on IDMs whose core business was making competing chips: unreliable capacity, and successful customers eventually competed with or were acquired by their own manufacturer.
- TSMC turned manufacturing into shared infrastructure, stripped out of competitors' core businesses, drastically lowering the bar to entry and enabling a fabless ecosystem that wins in the market yet depends on TSMC.
- By changing what it takes to participate in the industry, TSMC made itself the foundation of the semiconductor world — a market far larger than anyone estimated.
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