Before the quake, PC OEMS seem to have been unconcerned, for instance, that about 80 percent of their motherboards were coming from Taiwan. Fabless chip companies also saw no problem in relying on Taiwan-based fabs for the vast majority of their devices. Whether the recent disaster will cause some to hedge their bets in the future remains to be seen, and Taiwan's growth may depend on the answer. But as East's comments reveal, there are no risk-free regions or suppliers. Taiwan, after all, has been living under threat of military attack from mainland China since 1949, but that didn't deter the electronics industry from flocking to the island.
Silicon Valley sits atop numerous geological fault lines.
A large share of the world's DRAM supply is produced within artillery range of North Korea. A sizable electronics industry, including a wafer fab owned by Intel, is now situated in Israel, site of four wars in the last five decades. The trick, according to East, is not in avoiding risk, which is impossible, but in spreading it around. It uses foundries in Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Germany to handle the load. Right now we're launching three new families.