> You’re going to offer them a lot of money, citizenship, and exfiltration of their family to turn up at work, and threaten them with lifetime in supermax if they sabotage anything.

This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. You can't operate a fab based on coercion. It requires positive relationships. There are simply too many people involved doing things that the would-be coercers don't understand.

The idea that an entire TSMC fab is going to commit treason en mass is about as believable as thinking that NASA faked the moon landings and covered it up en mass. Large groups of people don't behave the same way as small groups of people.

If the US wants a fab, just give Intel money to build one. Trying to steal one from TSMC is a nonsensical plan. At least Intel would know how to operate their own fab.