There’s plenty of Malaysian fabs to handle those node sizes and products, no need to site them in Japan. Unless we collectively think that c-19 is going to be a problem in SEA for several more years.
Build time for fabs is quite long, and build time for a mature semiconductor industry (in India, for example) will be longer.
That said: I have stopped trying to think any COVID timeline is too long. Shit's wack. Shit will continue to stay wack for a while. Maybe a very long while.
