TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Claims that the U.S. would destroy Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing industry rather than let China gain control are untrue, according to the person the comments were attributed to on Monday (March 13).
U.S. news platform Semafor released an article, later republished by Business Insider, with the headline “U.S. would destroy Taiwan’s chip plants if China invades,” making a dubious inference from comments made by a former national security advisor to the Trump administration. Semafor misconstrued Robert O’Brien's claim that the U.S. allowing China to take over Taiwan was “never going to happen,” to make the claim that the U.S. would “demolish” Taiwan’s semiconductor industry rather than let China gain control.
The interviewer appeared misled by an analogy O’Brien made about Britain’s decision to destroy a French Navy fleet in World War Two to avoid it falling into the hands of the Nazis. “They bombed that fleet!” the interviewer said.
In February 2022, Semafor partnered with a think tank that operates under the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) United Front Work Department (UFWD), the CCP's branch responsible for promoting Chinese influence and ideas overseas. O’Brien suggested that his comments were deliberately misinterpreted in the interest of creating Chinese propaganda, per CNA.
He revealed, "The only people that will destroy Taiwan in an invasion are Communist China, and anyone who says that the U.S. is somehow going to destroy Taiwan or attack Taiwan, that's propaganda and misinformation from the Chinese Communist Party.”
While O’Brien denied the U.S. would destroy TSMC, a report published by the U.S. Army War College in 2021 recommended destruction as a course of action. “The United States and Taiwan should lay plans for a targeted 'scorched-earth' strategy that would render Taiwan not just unattractive if ever seized by force, but positively costly to maintain,” the authors said.
The report claimed, “This could be done most effectively by threatening to destroy facilities belonging to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company." The report received negative reception in Taiwan and abroad, and critics quickly pointed out that publicizing such a strategy would be an “enormous boon” to the CCP’s UFWD.
O’Brien said that Taiwan needs to buy more U.S. weapons and manufacture more defense equipment. Taiwan currently has a backlog of around US$19 billion (NT$589 billion) in U.S. arms purchases, since most weapons are being sent to Ukraine.
"My position is that we should give the same priority to Taiwan that we're giving to Ukraine," O‘Brien said. “Ukraine is already in a war …but for Taiwan, we have to deter a war."
