Chip War: the fight for the world's most critical technology

"An epic account of the decades-long battle to control what has emerged as the world's most critical resource--microchip technology--with the United States and China increasingly in conflict. You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil--the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything--from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock market--runs on chips. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower. Now, America's edge is slipping, undermined by competitors in Taiwan, Korea, Europe, and, above all, China. Today, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more money each year importing chips than it spends importing oil, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America's military superiority and economic prosperity. Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the U.S. become dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America's victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. But here, too, China is catching up, with its chip-building ambitions and military modernization going hand in hand. America has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, contributing not only to a worldwide chip shortage but also a new Cold War with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap. Illuminating, timely, and fascinating, Chip War shows that, to make sense of the current state of politics, economics, and technology, we must first understand the vital role played by chips"--Amazon.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member willszal

Computer chips are the foundational commodity of the cultures and lifestyles of the 21st century. In this book, Chris Miller outlines the way in which we've come further than ever thought possible by the inventors of the computer chip, and, how the computer chip supply chain is precariously

centralized.

Similar to the way that Yasha Levine, in "Surveillance Valley," establishes that a history of the internet is a military history, the history of computer chips is a military history. During the first twenty years of their development, 95% of revenues of computer chip companies came from (US) defense contracts.

Ever wonder where the term "debugging" comes from? Back when computers were composed of tubes, sometimes the tubes would attract moths, and sometimes the moths would damage the tubes (likely losing their lives in the process). "Debugging," was the process of removing the moths, cleaning up the circuitry, and replacing any blown tubes.

The first quarter of the 21st century has thus far also been the story of a growing cold war between China and the United States. This book describes these fronts from the perspectives of chips. Did you know that maintaining cutting-edge chip technology requires hundreds of billions of dollars of investment on an annual basis? Miller points out that, not even the US military budget (currently running at about three quarters of a trillion dollars a year) or Apple (with $360 billion in revenues in 2021) would be able to single-handedly maintain cutting edge chip infrastructure. It is necessarily a global, or at least multinational, project.

The technology required to make chips sounds like science fiction. Extreme ultra-violet light (closer in wavelength to x-ray than visible light) is produced by vaporizing droplets of tin with a massively powerful laser 50,000 times per second. This is then reflected on a mirror whose surface, if blow up to the size of Germany, would have tenth-of-a-millimeter variances in flatness, and would be able to aim well enough to hit a golf ball at the range of the moon. Chips have gotten so small that conventional electrical engineering becomes a poor map of reality and quantum tunneling is a challenge (where electrons show up in the "wrong" place).

Moore's law predicted the doubling in chip capacity, but only for one decades time. It has continued, unrelenting, for the past half century. That said, this is no reason to believe this breakneck pace of progress will be sustainable.

Are you curious about the provenance and history of the building blocks of modern life, and curious about the geopolitical tensions that result from the power that comes along with such technology? If so, then this is the book for you!

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LibraryThing member soraxtm

Readable compelling. A little overboard on the internet of things. Thinks we need chips in coffeemakers

LibraryThing member aquamari

Vaclav Smil has already written how foundational technologies like steel, concrete, plastics, and fertilizers underpin our civilization; without these, we would regress thousands of years. Add microchips to this list, a sector marked by a winner-takes-all dynamic, as explained by Chris

Miller.

Taiwan Semiconductor is the leading chip foundry, while the Dutch company, ASML, monopolizes EUV technology, vital for future chip generations. In this era of global superpower rivalry, control over these chips could be a deciding factor in conflict outcomes.

Whoever controls this technology, the supply chains and manufacturing facilities may influence the course of global history. Will the world continue to be led by the free and the brave, or will it succumb to the rule of authoritarians, leading to a survival-of-the-fittest society? A big part of the answer depends on the unfolding story of the semiconductor.

Miller's book explores the history and highlights what's at stake, making Chip Wars an essential read for our time.

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LibraryThing member RajivC

This book by Chris Miller will give you a good overview of the history of the development of microchips, our growing dependence on them and how they became recognised as an essential element of national security.

Chris Miller explains some forces driving our dependence on microchips and how they

are now the new front of trade wars.

While the book is breezy, and he gives us a clear history, the explanations and analysis are not deep.

He could have gone deeper into the subject.

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LibraryThing member fpagan

A massive, movers-and-shakers-oriented history of semiconductor integrated circuits (memory modules and microprocessors), from the post-war invention of the transistor to the inter-country struggles of the present day. Stages covered include the beginning of Silicon Valley; the period of Japanese

dominance; the US resurgence of the 1990s with the help of cheap-labor South Korea and the shift of emphasis to microprocessors; the rise of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Intel's extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography for chip making; the separation of chip design from fabrication, which was often outsourced/offshored to TSMC and others; the rise of GPU (graphics processing unit) chips, such as Nvidia's, and their role in AI and machine learning; China's recent efforts to catch up -- Huawei, 5G, and so on; military implications of it all and how very disastrous for the world a Chinese war on Taiwan could be. Whew.

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LibraryThing member djh_1962

This is a clearly written, deeply researched entirely fascinating history of the semiconductor silicon industry, telling of our complete dependence on it for many electrical devices without which modern life would be unimaginable and indeed impossible. That dependence is made worse by the fact that

the key manufacturer for the vast majority of semiconductor chips is TSMC in Taiwan, perilously placed in relation to China. And the desire of the US to prevent China from gaining the ascendancy in terms of chip development is one of the most compelling aspects of the book - not just its desire to ensure TSMC remains accessible but to increase domestic manufacture (not at all a straightforward process) but also to prevent access to China of the incredibly complicated and expensive equipment used to design and fabricate chips which is solely made by a Dutch company, ASML (and which is a very significant contributor to the Dutch economy). Anyway - hugely informative and topical.

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LibraryThing member mahsdad

istened to this on audio, at the recommendation of Oberon. This was an excellent read. Miller goes thru the history of the semi-conductor industry from the start when Silcon Valley wasn't a thing and Gordon Moore was just coming up with his "law". To the evitable off-shoring of manufacturing (which

happened much earlier than I suspected) to the current economic and national security battles that are ongoing with China and the US and where the much needed chips that drive our society need/can be made. Its the new Cold War. Excellent read.

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