Techno-Nationalism

Chapter 5De-Risking and Decoupling

In early 2023, Dell Inc., the world’s third-largest maker of personal computers, announced that it was moving its supply chains out of China amid concerns over geopolitical tensions.

Beyond geopolitics, however, Dell had also been burned by supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The tech-giant, like many others, had ‘single-sourced’ certain critical components and assembly functions to China, only to find many of its supply chains locked down by pandemic restrictions.

Dell’s plan called for diversifying its supply chains, and the phasing out of all production of semiconductors in China by 2024. It began diverting other key supply chains to Vietnam, Malaysia, India and Mexico.¹ Company management also directed its key suppliers to significantly reduce Chinese production of other inputs to Dell products.²

Other major brands have been following Dell’s example. Taiwan’s Foxconn, best known for assembling Apple’s iPhones and, by revenue, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer, moved to double its Indian workforce and investment by 2024. (In Chapter 27, we will delve further into India’s prospects as the next tech-manufacturing hub.)

Foxconn’s focus on India also involved a new partnership with Franco-Italian chip maker STMicro, a move that would help Foxconn to ramp up its assembly operations of smartphones and other electronic components in India. The percentage of iPhones assembled by Foxconn in India doubled ...