Apple CEO Tim Cook may be stepping down, but one thing still makes the Executive Chairman of the company’s board of directors sleep “with one eye open.”

That one thing? A Chinese blockade or invasion of Taiwan.

Why? Because Taiwan produces 90% of the world’s high-end computer chips. Almost all of that comes from one company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

Secure briefings for American tech leaders including Cook and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang warned just how devastating a Chinese military campaign against Taiwan would be for their companies, the U.S. and the global economy. As the New York Times warned in its investigation two months ago:

“A confidential report commissioned in 2022 by the Semiconductor Industry Association for its members, which include the largest U.S. chip companies, said cutting the supply of chips from Taiwan would lead to the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression. U.S. economic output would plunge 11 percent, twice as much as the 2008 recession…in the United States, the drop would be $2.5 trillion.”

The report detailed why Taiwan accounts for $10 trillion in global gross domestic product:

“It made chips for iPhones and more than half of so-called memory chips for cars, and it led in assembling A.I. chips.”

Despite the efforts of both the Biden and Trump administrations, the pace of construction for new plants in the United States remains too slow despite $50 billion in funding from the CHIPS Act. Tech companies are lagging in their commitments to purchase the chips those new plants will make, and without those commitments more plants won’t get built.

All of which means two things. First, expanding chip manufacturing in the U.S. is a matter of the highest national urgency. Second, any policy or military adventure that limits the ability of the United States to successfully deter, fight and defeat potential Chinese aggression is a dangerous distraction the nation simply cannot afford.

A dangerous distraction, that is, like the war in Iran.