Today, Operation Catapult has become a reference point in policy circles discussing an entirely different precious resource: computer chips, the tiny electronic components that power our computers, cars and missiles. Today, the world’s largest manufacturer of chips is the TSMC company, which is based in Taiwan; most of its manufacturing also takes place in Taiwan. TSMC produces more than half of all the world’s chips and more than 90% of the world’s advanced chips. That is a matter of growing concern as the world uneasily observes the great power competition now unfolding between the U.S. and China, with Taiwan stuck in the middle. China would like to annex Taiwan or reunify it with the mainland, according to the Chinese narrative. And now, questions are being asked: what should the U.S. and, broadly, the West do if China does attack Taiwan? Many are considering Operation Catapult as a model for dealing with the TSMC company in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Operation Catapult is not the only military reference used today when discussing chips. The language of war is becoming increasingly common in the context of chips. War games focused on TSMC’s chips are being conducted at the highest levels of government and by geopolitical and security think tanks in the US, China and Taiwan. These war games consider how the different parties may act under different scenarios of aggression, what happens to the TSMC chip factories in these scenarios, and what actions may be taken by each party to achieve their desired chip outcomes. The U.S. has considered contingency plans involving the evacuation of TSMC chip engineers in the event of a Chinese invasion or putting troops on the ground to protect Taiwanese chip manufacturing facilities. A U.S. Army journal has advocated for bombing TSMC chip manufacturing facilities in the event of a Chinese invasion—a scorched-earth approach similar to Operation Catapult to prevent TSMC’s chip facilities from falling under Chinese control.

All of this begs the question: what is so special about chips that they are in the middle of war planning in what may be the most consequential geopolitical conflict of our time?

Even aside from the war games, chips seem to have become a locus of secrecy and international intrigue. ASML, a Dutch company, is the only manufacturer of the extreme ultraviolet EUV machines that are necessary to build the most advanced chips today. In May 2024, it was reported that ASML now places a kill switch in its EUV machines that can be used to deactivate the machines remotely, to prevent an adversary from using them in the event of a hostile takeover. This kill switch is no mere gimmick. The Netherlands evaluated the switch through invasion simulations to assess risks in the event of a Chinese takeover of TSMC, which is the key user of ASML’s EUV machines. 

Just a year earlier, in a highly publicised case, ASML accused a Chinese engineer who worked for them in the U.S. of stealing their trade secrets and passing them to China. California subsequently issued an arrest warrant for the engineer. However, in what sounds like a scene from an international spy thriller, the accused engineer managed to evade the police who had gone to his house to arrest him and escaped to China. He now runs Dongfang Jingyuan Electron Ltd, a successful chipmaking firm in China with the strong support of the Chinese government.

Stringent security measures around chipmaking are not unique to ASML. In 2015, despite the Taiwan-China tensions, TSMC decided to set up a manufacturing plant in Nanjing, China. The move made sense economically, since China is one of the world’s largest consumers of chips. However, TSMC knew that all information entering and leaving the Nanjing facility would likely be intercepted and copied by the Chinese. TSMC therefore created an extremely unusual set-up for its Chinese operation: it set up a direct, fully encrypted, dedicated transmission line between its headquarters in Taiwan and the Nanjing facility. The most sensitive chip data was stored in servers in Taiwan and sent over the dedicated transmission line to China only when needed. Most interestingly, the data was sent in a form that rendered it useless after a single use: so, a use it and immediately lose it approach. The Nanjing facility was also completely rewalled from Taiwan, so there was no avenue for access to other data in Taiwan. Indeed, the employees at Nanjing had access only to magnetic paper. An alarm would be raised anytime someone tried to take a printout out of the facility.

Adapted from The Chip Age: How Chips Shaped Our Past and Will Define Our Future by Rakesh Kumar, published by Icon Books.