The Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region held Boom or Bust: Can Taiwan Secure the Energy Supplies It Needs to Meet Its High-Tech Aspirations? on Thursday, April 10, 2025 from 3:30-5:30 pm PT at Shultz Auditorium, George P. Shultz Building.

The prowess of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry puts it at the center of the AI boom. Chips made in Taiwan power most of the leading AI platforms, and its data centers are expanding at a rapid pace, driven by tech giants in cloud computing, AI, and the semiconductor industry. But this boom is also straining Taiwan’s energy supplies: the surge in electricity demand is happening while the transition to zero-carbon sources of energy has fallen behind schedule, and its final nuclear plant is scheduled to be shut down this year. Taiwan also faces a rising military threat from the People’s Republic of China, and its heavy reliance on imported energy supplies is a serious security vulnerability.  
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This event featured several experts with industry experience discussing these two parallel trends in Taiwan – the rapid AI-driven increases in demand for electricity, and the lagging development of new, more secure sources of carbon-free energy.  

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Peter Wu is the CEO of ASUS Cloud and Taiwan AI Service Corporation. He has led the development of AI Foundry Service (AFS), which advances on-premises AI deployment, cloud-based AI applications, and generative AI ecosystem to implement trust-worthy AI 2.0. In 2013, Dr. Wu represented Taiwan at the WTO Business Forum where he shared ASUS's development experience in cloud services, and he was appointed as a member of the Advisory Committee on Bio Taiwan Committee by Taiwan’s Executive Yuan in 2017 and 2019. In this capacity, he provided guidance and advice on the strategic direction of the biotechnology industry in Taiwan. From 2018 to 2020, he also managed the biggest AI supercomputer project in Taiwan, helping it to achieve its best-ever ranking of 20th in the TOP500. The project was then spun off into Taiwan AI Service Corporation, the first commercial AIHPC supercomputer cloud service provider in the Asia-Pacific. Dr. Wu is actively involved in various organizations and committees, including serving as the chairman of the Taiwan AI Alliance, and holds prominent roles in the fields of Smart Medical, AI, cloud computing, and others. 

Jane Yung-Jen Hsu is a professor and department chair of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan University. Her research interests include multi-agent systems, intelligent data analysis, commonsense knowledge, and context-aware computing. Prof. Hsu is the director of the Intel-NTU Connected Context Computing Center, featuring global research collaboration among NTU, Intel, and the National Science Council of Taiwan. She is actively involved in many key international AI conferences as organizers and members of the program committee. In addition to serving as the President of Taiwanese Association for Artificial Intelligence (2013-2014), Prof. Hsu has been a member of AAAI, IEEE, ACM, Phi Tau Phi, and an executive committee member of the IEEE Technical Committee on E-Commerce (2000) and TAAI (2004-current).

Li-fu Lin is an adviser to Formosa Heavy Industries. He previously served as the vice chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission – recently renamed the Nuclear Safety Commission – which supervises Taiwan’s nuclear power plants, nuclear facilities, and the use of radioactive material in commercial and research activities. From 2009-2013, he was the program manager of Taiwan’s National Energy Program, leading the National Science and Technology Council’s Clean Coal Projects. He spent more than 30 years as a researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Research, including serving as general manager from 2004-2007. He holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering from University Karlsruhe in Germany. 

​Gwenyth Wang-Reeves is the Engagement Director for GE Vernova in Taiwan. She is responsible for establishing, and driving GE’s advocacy initiatives in Taiwan, engaging with local and central governments and other stakeholders on important public policy challenges, as well as advising the GE businesses on a broad range of regulatory issues. Prior to joining GE Vernova, Gwenyth was the Senior Director of Government and Public Affairs at the American Chamber of Commerce Taiwan. She has also held several senior policy roles at Taiwan’s National Security Council and Presidential Office, as well as the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Taiwan. Gwenyth holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the National Taiwan University, Master’s degrees in Political Communication at the Royal Holloway, and Democracy and Democratisation at the University of London and University College London, as well as a PhD in Politics and International Relations from the University of Warwick.

Vincent Chen, a Taiwan native, is an energy investment and policy specialist with a decade of experience in the private sector. From 2020 to 2023, he served as an investment manager at GSSG Solar, a U.S.-based renewable energy private equity fund, where he led the development of its power generation portfolio in Taiwan. His work included building Taiwan’s first hybrid solar energy and aquaculture project backed by a foreign investor. Before joining GSSG, Vincent led business development and fundraising at Jupiter Intelligence, a climate risk analytics provider, and Lucid Motors, an electric vehicle manufacturer. His research interests encompass power markets, environmental markets, and carbon border adjustments. He holds a master’s degree in international development economics from the Harvard Kennedy School and a bachelor’s degree in environmental economics from Stanford University.

The Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region  and the Stanford Taiwan Science and Technology Hub held Enhancing Energy Security in a Time of Rapid Change: Perspectives from the US and Taiwan on Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 from 4:45 pm - 7:15 pm PT.

Over the next decade, the world will face a major energy challenge. Most of the world’s advanced economies are trying to manage a transition to net-zero emissions at the same time that electricity demand is projected to surge. In particular, the recent emergence of artificial intelligence as a rapid growth industry, and its associated electricity-hungry data centers, has led many tech companies to secure long-term carbon-free sources of electricity for their activities – including nuclear power.
In this event, we will hear from people in the energy and technology fields in both the US and Taiwan about how the surge in AI-related electricity demand – and the related impacts on semiconductor manufacturing in Taiwan – is affecting energy security in both countries. We especially want to call attention to the way that new technologies may require changes in the planned transition to zero-carbon energy sources.
 
This event was hosted online and live-streamed to the public. It is co-sponsored with the Stanford Taiwan Science and Technology Hub.

Featuring
Paul Dabbar, CEO, Bohr Quantum Technology
Jared Dunnmon, Senior Advisor for Strategic Initiatives, Defense Innovation Unit
Jennifer Huffstetler, Chief Product Sustainability Officer and VP/GM of
Intel Future Platform Strategy and Sustainability
Gwenyth Wang-Reeves, Engagement Director, GE Taiwan
Kuor-hsin Chang, Independent Board Member, Sentelic, Inc. 
Tsaiying Lu, Research Fellow, Research Institute for Democracy, Society,
and Emerging Technology 

On behalf of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and The Global Policy and Strategy Initiative, the Hoover Institution invites you to Taiwan After the 2024 Elections Annual Conference, Thursday, May 23, 2024, from 8:30 AM - 5:15 PM to Friday, May 24, 2024 from 8:45 AM - 2:00 PM in HHMB 160.
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Taiwan’s next president William Lai (賴清德) takes office on May 20, 2024. His victory in the January 2024 elections ensures that the ruling Democracy Progressive Party (DPP) will hold the presidency for an unprecedented third consecutive term. But Lai won only 40 percent of the presidential vote, and the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) together now control a majority of the seats in the legislature. President-elect Lai’s new administration is also likely to face continued pressure from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and he will have to deal with an increasingly complex and uncertain international environment.  
 
Join us as we bring together a diverse group of experts to discuss the policy challenges and opportunities that the incoming Lai administration will face. It will feature panels on the 2024 election results, governance challenges, the future of Taiwan’s economy, security and defense issues, US-Taiwan-PRC relations, and perspectives of key U.S. allies and partners on the U.S.-Taiwan relationship.
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This conference will bring together a diverse group of experts to discuss the policy challenges and opportunities that the incoming Lai administration will face. It will feature panels on the 2024 election results, governance challenges, the future of Taiwan’s economy, security and defense issues, US-Taiwan-PRC relations, and perspectives of key U.S. allies and partners on the U.S.-Taiwan relationship.

Participants
Terry Tsao is a seasoned executive and industry leader, currently serving as the Global Chief Marketing Officer and President of Taiwan at SEMI. In his current capacity, Terry Tsao assumes the responsibility of directing corporate marketing strategies of SEMI, encompassing various critical areas such as strategy formulation, association operations, product marketing, and market communications. Moreover, he leads the SEMI Market Intelligence Team, driving data-driven insights and actionable intelligence within the organization. In his leadership position for SEMI Taiwan, Tsao oversees all aspects of activity planning, product offerings, and service content. With over 16 years of experience at SEMI, Tsao has significantly advanced Taiwan's semiconductor community and spearheaded crucial policy initiatives within the global semiconductor industry. Prior to his current position, Tsao held dual roles as the President of SEMI Taiwan and the President of SEMI Southeast Asia, leveraging his extensive experience to drive advancements in the semiconductor industry across multiple regions.

Tain-Jy Chen is a senior professor of economics at TSE, and also a professor emeritus of National Taiwan University. In addition to teaching, he has previously served as the president of Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research, a think tank specializing in economic policy studies, and also in the Taiwan government, as the minister for Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) and National Development Council (NDC). This experience gives him wide exposures to policy formations and implementations. As an economist, his research interests are in economic development and trade policies. He earned a Ph.D. degree in economics in 1983 from Pennsylvania State University. He has published extensively in academic journals, mostly in the fields of trade, investment, and industrial development. His recent work focuses on industrial development of China and the US-China trade war.

Kuo-Chun Yeh is a professor at the Graduate Institute of National Development, a researcher at Center for China Studies, and Coordinator of China Research Program, National Taiwan University.  He is Secretary-general of the Chinese Association of Political Science (CAPS Taipei).  Since 2021 he has been an EU Jean Monnet Chair focusing on the EU-China industrial competition.

Burn-Jeng Lin is a Distinguished Senior Professor at National Tsing Hua University, a position he has held since retiring as Vice President of TSMC in 2016. He joined TSMC as a senior director in 2000 and became Vice President in 2011. Prior to that, he founded and led Linnovation, Inc. From 1970 to 1992, Dr. Lin worked at IBM, where he held various technical and managerial positions and was the first person to propose immersion lithography, a technique that eventually became viable in the 1980s. Dr. Lin is an IEEE Life Fellow and SPIE Fellow and was elected to the membership of the United States National Academy of Engineering in 2008 and as an Academician of Academia Sinica in 2014. He received a B.S. from National Taiwan University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Ohio State University.

FEATURING:
Larry Diamond - Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
James O. Ellis - Annenberg Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Kharis Templeman - Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution
H.-S. Philip Wong - Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University

Join the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, together with the Program on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region at the Hoover Institution, on Wednesday, March 8, from Noon–1 PM Pacific, for Semiconductors and Geo-technology: ‘Know-how’ is Power, a discussion with Dr. Chun-Yi Lee, Associate Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations, and Director of the Taiwan Studies Program, at the University of Nottingham. The session will be moderated by Charles Mok, visiting scholar at the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPi).

Geopolitics is conventionally understood as a struggle for power. The focus of geopolitical analysis is typically on states; power is understood in terms of states’ economic and military strength. In the era of globalisation, production relies on complex supply chains. While this paper focuses on the production of a hi-tech product—semiconductors—it argues more generally that technology production and supply chain ‘know how’ is implicated in geopolitical power. Through an elaboration of the concept of ‘geo-technology’, this paper argues that a consideration of technology production capacity (or ‘know-how’) can enrich conventional understandings of geopolitics.

The US, Taiwan and China play different roles in the global semiconductor manufacturing supply chain. The leading semiconductor designers are based in the US, while the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produces most of the world’s high-end chips. China, on the other hand, is an economic and manufacturing powerhouse, but remains at the low end of the manufacturing supply chain. This paper argues that the US and Taiwan have significant leverage in the production of semiconductors, granting them geopolitical power. It therefore asks if Taiwan, and the US, can use their technological 'know-how’ to gain further leverage in the geopolitical tug of war with China. Data of this paper will come from semi-constructed interviews in Taiwan and Japan, approximately twenty elite interviews from technology policy analysts, policy makers and high-skilled engineers, along with relevant policy analyses. The paper aims to explore the link between human talents in the semiconductor supply chain and geopolitics.

This session is part of the Winter Seminar Series, a series spanning January through March, hosted at the Cyber Policy Center with the Program on Democracy and the Internet. Sessions are in-person and virtual, with in-person attendance offered to Stanford affiliates only. Lunch is provided for in-person attendance. Registration is required. 

About the Speaker
Dr. Chun-Yi Lee is Associate Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations, and Director of the Taiwan Studies Program, at the University of Nottingham. Her first book, Taiwanese Business or Chinese Security Asset?, was published by Routledge in 2011. She is currently working on her second monograph, on semiconductor manufacturing and geopolitics. She is editor in chief of the on-line academic magazine, Taiwan Insight, and co-editor of the ‘Taiwan and World Affairs’ book series with Palgrave.

In 2020, 93 percent of the energy consumed in Taiwan came from imported fossil fuels: oil, coal, and liquid natural gas. Taiwan’s government is also phasing out nuclear power, with the last nuclear generation unit scheduled to be shut down in 2025. This overwhelming reliance on imports is at odds with Taiwan’s pledges to reduce its carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050. It also presents a serious security vulnerability: a prolonged disruption of energy supplies could quickly bring Taiwan’s economy to a halt, including its strategically important semiconductor industry.

In this event, three experts on Taiwan’s energy policies will discuss Taiwan’s changing energy mix, its ambitious plans for developing renewable energy sources and lessening dependence on imports, and how Taiwan’s exclusion from important international energy bodies such as the International Energy Agency adds to its energy security challenges.

Abstract
Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy is a record of a thirty-year research project that Gary G. Hamilton and Kao Cheng-shu began in 1987.  A distinguished sociologist and university administrator in Taiwan, Kao and his research team (which included Prof. Hamilton during his frequent visits to Taiwan) interviewed over 800 owners and managers of Taiwanese firms in Taiwan, China, and Vietnam.  Some were re-interviewed over ten times during this period.  The length of this project allows them a vantage point to challenge the conventional interpretations of Asian industrialization and to present a new interpretation of the global economy that features an enduring alliance between, on the one hand, American and European retailers and merchandisers and, on the other hand, Asian contract manufacturers, with Taiwanese industrialists becoming the most prominent contract manufacturers in the past forty years.

Bio
Gary G. Hamilton is a Professor Emeritus of International Studies and Sociology at the University of Washington.  He specializes in historical/comparative sociology, economic sociology, with a special emphasis on Asian societies. He is an author of numerous articles and books, including most recently Emergent Economies, Divergent Paths, Economic Organization and International Trade in South Korea and Taiwan (with Robert Feenstra) (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Commerce and Capitalism in Chinese Societies (London: Routledge, 2006), The Market Makers: How Retailers Are Changing the Global Economy (co-editor and contributor, Oxford University Press, 2011; paperback 2012), and Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy (with Kao Cheng-shu, Stanford University Press, 2018).