While Russian gas can be replaced with other forms of energy, microchips made in Taiwan cannot. The country’s chip giant TSMC has attained a global market dominance of truly systemic proportions. But why is that? During her whirlwind tour of Taiwan, US House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi was not only talking geopolitics with the Asian country’s political leaders; but also business at the island’s most-valuable firm, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, also known as TSMC. Pelosi’s meeting with TSMC chairman Mark Liu on Wednesday highlighted the outsized technological weight of the chipmaker in the global economy. From aerospace to...