TSMC

Key Findings

• Economic: TSMC appointed Avnet ASIC Israel Ltd. as a Value Chain Aggregator on 20 February 2024, creating a documented channel for design through wafer manufacture, assembly, and testing using TSMC processes.¹
• Corporate links: Independent director Moshe N. Gavrielov is disclosed as chairman of Foretellix, Ltd., a non-public Israeli company; TSMC’s disclosures do not identify TSMC ownership, a state contract, settlement nexus, or political activity associated with that outside role.²
• Political: TSMC is Taiwan-incorporated and headquartered in Hsinchu; its disclosed facilities, offices, and subsidiary charts do not identify an Israeli TSMC manufacturing site, office, or subsidiary.³
• Not found: No public evidence identified in the reviewed materials of Israeli military or security contracting, military-specific products, Project Nimbus participation, Israeli surveillance deployment, or settlement operations.⁴

Target Profile

Key Facts:

• TSMC was incorporated on 21 February 1987 and describes itself as established in 1987.³
• Its disclosed group structure includes entities and operations across Taiwan, North America, Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, Arizona, and Germany; these disclosure scopes do not identify an Israeli-incorporated subsidiary.⁵
• TSMC identifies Morris Chang as founder; he is not presented in the reviewed current materials as a current officer or director.⁶

Executive Summary

TSMC is a Taiwan-based dedicated semiconductor foundry: it manufactures customers’ integrated-circuit products and conducts related sales, packaging, testing, computer-aided design, and mask-manufacturing activities.³ The evidence record establishes an Israel-linked commercial channel rather than a disclosed Israeli operating base. On 20 February 2024, TSMC appointed Avnet ASIC Israel Ltd. as a Value Chain Aggregator (VCA). Avnet described the channel as supporting ASIC/SoC design, layout, backend work, wafer manufacturing, assembly, and testing through TSMC processes.¹ Avnet stated that its collaboration with TSMC had then lasted 20 years; the announcement did not identify customers, contract value, wafer volumes, end-use sectors, military users, or any settlement-linked location.¹

Other audit-documented Israeli commercial connections remain limited and caveated. Valens Semiconductor Ltd., an Israeli-incorporated fabless company, reported that all its silicon wafers were designed to be manufactured at TSMC; its disclosed target markets included audiovisual, automotive connectivity, video conferencing, education, medical, industrial, entertainment, and ADAS/autonomous applications.⁷ That filing documents a foundry relationship but does not identify an Israeli military or security end-user, defence contract, or weapons application.⁷ Arbe Robotics likewise identified TSMC as a critical third-party supplier for wafers designed to be manufactured at TSMC, but its filing does not state that TSMC supplies the Israeli Ministry of Defense or IDF.⁸

TSMC’s public disclosures do not identify an Israeli factory, office, support centre, research centre, warehouse, workforce figure, tax registration, market-revenue figure, or Israeli-incorporated subsidiary.⁵ These are disclosure-scoped findings, not proof that no customer, distributor, shipment, immaterial entity, or confidential commercial relationship exists. The same limitation applies to omissions from reviewed official, UN, OHCHR, and civil-society materials.⁴

No public evidence identified in the audited material of a TSMC contract or partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, IDF, intelligence bodies, Israel Police, settlement municipalities, or identified Israeli defence primes. No public evidence identified of TSMC manufacturing or integrating named Israeli weapons systems; operating Israeli government cloud infrastructure or participating in Project Nimbus; deploying Israeli-origin surveillance technology; or operating in settlements, occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank, or the Golan Heights.⁴ These negative findings are bounded to the reviewed sources and are not universal non-existence findings.

The human-vetted V6.5 outcome is therefore driven exclusively by the documented economic channel, with no final score assigned in the military, digital, or political domains. TSMC receives a BRS of 325, placing it in Tier D (Moderate Complicity).

Timeline of Relevant Events

Corporate Overview

TSMC is the consolidated reporting parent for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited and its consolidated subsidiaries, with no separate ultimate parent identified in the reviewed filings.¹⁵ It is a pure-play/dedicated foundry rather than a consumer-content, retail-platform, cloud-hosting, or user-data-processing company.³

The reviewed 2024 and 2025 corporate disclosures identify subsidiaries, controlled entities, facilities, or offices in Taiwan, North America, Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, Arizona, and Germany, including TSMC North America, TSMC Europe B.V., TSMC Japan Limited, TSMC China, TSMC Nanjing, TSMC Arizona, Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing, and ESMC GmbH.⁵ TSMC also reported majority ownership of Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing, European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, and VisEra Technologies, and a 27.6% direct interest in associate Vanguard International Semiconductor Corporation.¹⁴

No reviewed subsidiary chart or location disclosure identifies an Israeli TSMC subsidiary, fabrication facility, engineering office, R&D centre, support centre, or other TSMC-owned Israeli operating site.⁵ Those materials are not exhaustive proof of nonexistence: insignificant subsidiaries need not be individually listed, and corporate location disclosures do not exclude customers, intermediaries, distributors, or non-public relationships.⁵

The documented Israeli relationship is instead an intermediary channel: Avnet ASIC Israel’s VCA appointment. Its published description concerns semiconductor engineering and manufacturing services, not a TSMC acquisition, investment, franchise, Israeli-owned fabrication site, or state partnership.¹ A board-level outside affiliation also exists: independent director Moshe N. Gavrielov is disclosed as chairman of Foretellix, Ltd., a non-public Israeli company. The reviewed disclosures do not identify a TSMC investment in Foretellix, Gavrielov’s equity interest, or a connection to military, surveillance, settlement, or political-advocacy activity.²

Domain Summaries

Military: Military

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of a publicly documented TSMC contract, tender award, framework agreement, memorandum, supplier relationship, co-production arrangement, or technology transfer with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, IDF, Israel Prison Service, Border Police, Elbit, IAI, Rafael, IMI/Elbit Land, or another identified Israeli security body.⁴

The audited material identifies commercial semiconductor-foundry relationships with Israeli companies, including Valens, but does not establish a military end user, military product, defence contract, or kinetic-weapons application.⁷ No public evidence identified of a TSMC tactical, military-specific, or mil-spec product line for Israeli end users; components specifically connected to Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow, Israeli aircraft, armour, munitions, or drones; or base-support, freight, facilities, or communications services for Israeli military installations.⁴

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

TSMC’s strongest documented defence is the civilian, general-purpose character of the evidence record. It is a foundry manufacturing customer products, and the cited Israeli commercial relationships do not identify a defence end user or a weapon-system application.^{3, 7} The reviewed 2023 Israeli DSEI delegation document listed IAI, Rafael, and Semiconductor Devices among exhibitors but did not list TSMC; however, it is an exhibition list, not a comprehensive contracting or supplier database.¹⁶

The absence findings are necessarily bounded. The audit did not include dedicated reviews of Israeli tender systems, export-licence databases, court dockets, DSCA/FMS notices, or Israeli corporate registries. Omission from public disclosure cannot establish absence of unnamed customers, intermediaries, distributors, shipments, or downstream incorporation of chips.⁴

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Digital: Digital

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified that TSMC participates in Project Nimbus, operates Israeli government cloud infrastructure, provides Israeli sovereign-cloud or data-residency services, or operates an Israeli pipeline for user-data processing, storage, routing, or related R&D.⁴ TSMC describes itself as a pure-play foundry, not a user-data collection, hosting, or cloud-processing platform.³

No public evidence identified of TSMC licensing or integrating products from named Israeli-origin enterprise technology, cybersecurity, surveillance, biometric, behavioural-analytics, predictive-policing, or workforce-surveillance providers.⁴ The Avnet VCA reporting describes a semiconductor-production route. It does not establish TSMC use of Avnet within TSMC’s own enterprise stack, nor identify Israeli state, military, intelligence, security, settlement, or data-processing customers.¹

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

The evidence supports a commercial manufacturing-channel nexus, not a digital-service nexus. Although the VCA arrangement was described as supporting applications including AI, automotive, high-performance computing, and data-centre chips, it does not establish provision of AI systems, AI-enabled chips, targeting, tracking, surveillance-derived data, or related services to Israeli state bodies.¹

The absence finding is limited to the materials reviewed. Public location and subsidiary disclosures do not rule out confidential commercial, customer, supplier, subcontractor, or indirect relationships outside the public record.⁵

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Economic: Economic

Mechanism of Involvement

The economic nexus is the core documented vector. On 20 February 2024, TSMC appointed Avnet ASIC Israel Ltd. as a VCA channel partner.¹ Avnet described the arrangement as providing ASIC/SoC services across design, layout, backend work, wafer manufacture, assembly, and testing using TSMC processes. Avnet also stated that its TSMC collaboration had lasted 20 years as of that announcement.¹

A June 2026 trade report described Avnet ASIC managing RAAAM Memory Technology production at TSMC on a 2nm process, indicating continued use of the VCA channel.¹⁷ This supports the conclusion that the VCA is a continuing semiconductor-production mechanism. It does not identify contract value, volumes, named end users, locations of delivery, Israeli military users, settlement-related activity, or Israel-specific revenue.^{1, 17}

Valens independently documented that its wafers were designed to be manufactured at TSMC. This demonstrates an additional Israel-linked commercial foundry relationship as of FY2023, while leaving end-use attribution unresolved.⁷

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

TSMC has no disclosed Israeli TSMC-owned factory, office, warehouse, support centre, R&D centre, workforce figure, tax registration, market-revenue figure, customs registration, or Israeli subsidiary in the reviewed corporate materials.⁵ Its reported manufacturing sites are in Taiwan, China, the United States, Japan, and Germany, while the identified overseas support and engineering footprint does not name Israel.³

The VCA announcement is not evidence of an Israeli TSMC operating subsidiary, acquisition, investment, or local facility. It also does not confirm whether the appointment remained active after July or November 2024; later trade reporting supports continuing use but does not resolve all terms of the arrangement.^{1, 17} Disclosure omissions cannot exclude indirect entities, non-controlled investments, customers, distributors, or other commercial relations.⁵

No public evidence identified of Israeli agricultural or consumer-goods sourcing, Israeli sovereign-bond holdings, Israel-focused fund investment, local profit repatriation, or an Israel-specific tax or revenue contribution.⁵

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Political: Political

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of TSMC corporate statements, campaigns, public positions, lobbying, political advocacy, donations, financing, logistics, or Israel/Palestine-specific resource mobilisation relating to Israel/Palestine in the reviewed materials.¹⁸ No public evidence identified of a partnership with Israeli state bodies, including the Ministry of Defense, IDF, Israel Police, Civil Administration, or settlement municipalities.¹⁸

TSMC’s foundational governmental connection is Taiwanese, not Israeli: it states that it was founded as a joint venture involving the Republic of China government and private investors. The National Development Fund held 6.38% of common shares in the reported period and has board representation.^{14, 13} This does not establish an Israeli political nexus.

The audit found no public evidence of TSMC-owned or operated facilities in settlements, occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank, or the Golan Heights.⁴ The OHCHR and UN document-scoped materials reviewed did not identify TSMC, though this does not establish database-wide absence.¹⁹

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

The strongest defence is that no documented political or settlement activity was identified and that TSMC’s Israel-linked evidence is commercial foundry-channel evidence rather than an Israeli state partnership.^{1, 18} TSMC’s 2024 Sustainability Report states that it is legally prohibited from making political donations because it is majority-owned by foreign shareholders and that it has maintained political neutrality.²⁰

That statement does not erase the company’s reported historical Taiwan political donations between 2000 and 2004, but those donations concern Taiwan and the 2009 statement does not establish continuation after 2004.¹⁰ Likewise, directors’ outside affiliations do not establish that TSMC directed, financed, or endorsed activity by those organizations. Ursula M. Burns’s Ford Foundation trusteeship does not establish that she selected, directed, or funded any particular Ford Foundation grant.²¹

Named Entities and Evidence Map

BDS-1000 Score

Method: V6.5

• V_MAX: 3.90 Avg_OTHERS: 0.00
• BRS Score: 325 Tier: D (Moderate Complicity)

V_MAX is driven by the verified Avnet ASIC Israel VCA channel and its direct semiconductor-production relationship, while the audits did not verify military, digital, settlement, or Israeli political activity sufficient to produce final scores in those domains.¹ The Tier reflects the fixed, human-vetted V6.5 assessment rather than an inference that unverified downstream end uses are established. The method is scale-free, evidence-only, and applies documented activity, scale, and directness rather than allegation volume.

Methodology Note

• Evidence is limited to the four supplied domain audits and their cited documentary sources.
• The assessment is evidence-only: allegations, downstream possibilities, and omissions in limited disclosures are not treated as verified conduct.
• Impact (I) reflects activity type; Magnitude (M) reflects scale; and Proximity (P) reflects directness of the documented relationship.
• Divested or exited operations are mitigated rather than treated as current conduct; wrong-entity or unsupported attribution is excluded.
• Entity attribution is direct: a customer, director’s outside role, intermediary, shareholder, or downstream possibility does not automatically establish corporate responsibility.
• A settlement operation may be assessed in both Economic and Political where evidence supports both vectors; no such TSMC operation was identified here.
• “No public evidence identified” means the audited checks found no supporting public record in their reviewed source sets; it is not a universal claim of absence.