In the city of Sendai, where South Korean and Japanese business leaders recently gathered, SK Hynix Chairman Chey Tae-won quietly signaled a possible new chapter in the geography of memory chip manufacturing. The company, which sits at the heart of the artificial intelligence infrastructure boom, is studying whether a joint venture in Japan could help it meet surging demand while distributing the risks of expansion across borders. It is a moment that speaks to something larger: the way AI's appetite for computation is redrawing the map of global industry, pulling chipmakers into new alliances