According to a legal filing made to the US Secrurities and Exchange Comission, TSMC strongly suspects that a former senior-viceprosiden, Wei-Jen Lo, whh in 2024 was providing direct advisory role to the CEO and Chairman of the board, was a bit too curious about some parts of the company.
Despite being placed in "Corporate Strategy Development", that has absolutely nothing to do with the R&D department, he was caught seeling out information about what court filings describe as "The advanced technologies currently, and planned to be, under development by TSMC".
What promted the investigation seems to be a healthy portion of critical thinking, as Lo had claimed to retire from the company as to pursue academics, while in reality he joined Intel - despite Lo seeminly being reminded about a signed NDA, as well as a signed non-competition clause when he left the company.
Intel has rejected all claims, while the filing states that TSMC is of the opinion that "There is a high probability" that trade secrets have been transferred to to Intel.
Intel is, by pure coincidence, most likely very open to applications from people with deep knowledge of TSMC manufacturing, as they are seen as some of the best in the industry, and the only ones advanced enough to make the most cutting edge semiconductors, to a degree where Intel recently engaged TSMC to make Intel products - despite Intel also trying to build a competing manufacturing department.