“Taiwan Loses Its Strategic Importance In 18 Months,” Says Chamath Palihapitiya

In an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier that aired Friday, President Trump said that he doesn’t want “to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war” over Taiwan.

“I’m not looking to have somebody to go independent and, you know, we’re supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war,” Trump told Baier. “I’m not looking for that. I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down.”

Taiwan has been a major point of friction between Washington and Beijing. Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC News that the issue was not a key topic during Trump’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The initial White House readout of the summit also did not mention Taiwan, home to the world’s most advanced semiconductor production.

Taiwan is strategically important for three main reasons:

• It is indispensable to global semiconductor production.

• It sits at the center of the Western Pacific security architecture.

• It remains a major flashpoint in U.S.-China relations.

In other words, Taiwan is critically important to the U.S. because it is not only a semiconductor production supernode, but also a geopolitical fortress against China and a potential flashpoint in U.S.-China relations.

However, Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO of Social Capital and part of the All-In podcast, pointed out that Taiwan could be on track to lose one of its most strategic advantages in the next 18 months.

Palihapitiya continued:

We’re 18 months from Taiwan not being an important moment of conversation the way it is today.

Why 18 months? Because we are at a point where we’re probably 1-2 nanometers away from being able to do what we need Taiwan to strategically do for us.

And so as we scale up our chip fabs, as we get more capacity, and interestingly, there are these orthogonal technologies being developed.

I don’t know if you guys saw, but Neuralink was showcasing a machine that is literally operating at the almost nanometer scale to do the brain operations for the implantation, all automatically.

When you have the dexterity and the capability mechanically to make these things, the real reason then is a very different one than what it is today.

Today, it’s economic. And if you take that off the table, I think we’ll have a very different attitude to Taiwan.

Chamath: Taiwan Loses Its Strategic Importance in 18 Months@chamath:

“ We’re 18 months from Taiwan not being an important moment of conversation the way it is today.

Why 18 months? Because we are at a point where we’re probably 1-2 nanometers away from being able to do what… pic.twitter.com/XL2UqRIQyi

— The All-In Podcast (@theallinpod) May 17, 2026

Palihapitiya’s take on the rise of U.S. chip fabs, many of which are based in Arizona and could soon turn the state into the new Taiwan, drew backlash on X, notably from geopolitical risk analyst Ian Bremmer, who said, “This is Trump’s perspective: the only thing that matters about Taiwan is the chips. Very different from the view of U.S. allies in the region: Japan, South Korea, and Australia.”