Overview

• Taiwanese prosecutors arrested six people, including a former Tokyo Electron employee, under the National Security Act for allegedly stealing trade secrets from TSMC’s upcoming 2 nm process.
• Investigators allege that TSMC staffers shared some 400 technical photographs with Japanese startup Rapidus, exposing details of the company’s next-generation fabrication node.
• Tokyo Electron dismissed its implicated Taipei unit employee and said it has found no evidence that the leaked data reached other parties.
• Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council has tasked experts to assess whether the stolen information qualifies as core national security technology.
• A senior Taiwanese official stated that leaked process details are compartmentalized and unusable on their own, but TSMC and authorities continue internal and legal inquiries.