You need an army of wizards who are willing to do, for the most part, lab-tech work for lab-tech salary while having a graduate degree in relevant field
This is something I don't understand. These companies make good profits -- why don't they pay their experts well?
They don’t make good profits. TSMC has fairly mediocre numbers by the standard of the tech industry. Intel has really bad numbers for the last several decades. AMD was having so much trouble with foundries that they spun it off.
That is actually a big part of how TSMC got ahead. It's a race. All those years of being able to get PhDs to work midnight-8am (because you're the most prestigious employer in the country, by far) move you to the next node just a bit faster. It adds up.
Why work smarter or harder? Do both!