Shadow Hunting: China Poaches Taiwan AI Engineers to Evade Sanctions

A blockade stimulates the search for unconventional solutions. On April 7, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (NSB) issued an official warning: China has launched a massive campaign to recruit Taiwanese specialists in AI and semiconductors.

Against the backdrop of strict US export controls (the criminal cases in Singapore confirm this), Beijing is trying to acquire technologies not through server purchases, but through direct brain drain. Taipei views this as a direct threat to national security. Siphoning engineering talent from TSMC and local AI labs to the mainland is China’s attempt to create a sovereign and fully closed loop of chip production for training its own LLM models under conditions of technological isolation.

Source: Taiwan NSB / Reuters