Everyone talks about choke points. The Strait of Hormuz was always there and occasionally mentioned as a theoretical issue–until we blundered into it. So now people talk about choke points, but still as if this is something around the edges. Hormuz affects others but not so much us.
However choke points aren’t just geographic. Rare earths were and still remain choke points that the Chinese can use any time they want something from us. Even the military can’t function without them. But that’s just the beginning.
Let’s go back to a chart from our piece on trade:
🏆 Top 10 U.S. Companies by Market Capitalization (2026 estimates)
- NVIDIA Corporation – approx. $4.5 trillion (currently world’s largest)
- Apple Inc. – ~$4.0 trillion
- Alphabet Inc. – ~$3.8 trillion
- Microsoft Corporation – ~$3.6 trillion
- Amazon.com, Inc. – ~$2.5 trillion
- Meta Platforms, Inc. – ~$1.4 trillion
- Broadcom Inc. – ~$1.7 trillion
- Tesla, Inc. – ~$1.3 trillion
- Berkshire Hathaway Inc. – ~$1.0 trillion
- JPMorgan Chase & Co. – ~$0.6–0.7 trillion (approximate, rounding into the top decade range)
As noted, the top two companies are 100% dependent on hardware from TSMC in Taiwan. They do the design work, and TSMC builds it. For Nvidia that’s everything. For Apple there is some manufacturing in the US, but not the more advanced and product-defining chips. So the two most valuable companies in the US can do nothing without Taiwan. And again that’s just the beginning. It also says that the entire AI infrastructure on which we are basing the future of the country and for which we are investing inconceivable sums of money is close to 100% dependent on hardware from Taiwan. Those Nvidia cards from Taiwan are our supposed ace in the hole to win the AI race with China!
Taiwan is a choke point now and for the foreseeable future. It’s not simple for China to use it, but even harder for us to stop them if they choose to. Xi made very clear to Trump that he was not to get in the way of China’s plans for the future of Taiwan—whatever those might be–and Trump immediately backed off on US arms sales. For the record we have also depleted our own munitions in the Iran war.
So where does that leave us? We may continue to strut around as if we still owned the world, but China has the keys. The idea that we can shake down the rest of the world because no one can touch us is false where it matters. We need an orderly world where we can count on stability of choke points. For that we need allies and international institutions. Otherwise it’s not our world, as we thought it would always be.
on the outside 