"Please come work for us, we'll pay you loads!"
According to French publication Le Monde, Huawei has been trying to hire TSMC engineers every few months, a way of not only securing these employees' vast experience, but also in the hope of acquiring some of TSMC's trade secrets. As noted by Tom's Hardware, TSMC enforces strict project compartmentalization, thereby ensuring no single employee has wide access to its sensitive information. Therefore, Huawei and SMIC – China's leading chipmaker, which is also on the Entity List – have been casting their recruitment nets wide over TSMC in the hope of learning all they can about its confidential tech.