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Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology by [Chris Miller]

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Chris Miller

Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology Kindle Edition

by Chris Miller (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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The Financial Times Business Book of the Year, this epic account of the decades-long battle to control one of the world’s most critical resources—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in fierce competition is “pulse quickening…a nonfiction thriller” (The New York Times).

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—runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing. Now, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more on chips than any other product, 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 US became 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. Until recently, China had been catching up, aligning its chip-building ambitions with military modernization.

Illuminating, timely, and fascinating, Chip War is “an essential and engrossing landmark study" (London Times).

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Publication date

October 4, 2022
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Popular Highlights in this book

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China now spends more money each year importing chips than it spends on oil.
Highlighted by 575 Kindle readers
Chips from Taiwan provide 37 percent of the world’s new computing power each year. Two Korean companies produce 44 percent of the world’s memory chips. The Dutch company ASML builds 100 percent of the world’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, without which cutting-edge chips are simply impossible to make. OPEC’s 40 percent share of world oil production looks unimpressive by comparison.
Highlighted by 533 Kindle readers
These tools are produced primarily by five companies, one Dutch, one Japanese, and three Californian, without which advanced chips are basically impossible to make. Then the chip is packaged and tested, often in Southeast Asia, before being sent to China for assembly into a phone or computer.
Highlighted by 530 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

Financial Times Business Book of the Year
An Economist Best Book of the Year
New York Times Bestseller
Winner 2023 PROSE Award for Outstanding Work by a Trade Publisher
Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize
Shortlisted for the Arthur Ross Book Award

“Pulse quickening…Chip War makes a whale of a case: that the chip industry now determines both the structure of the global economy and the balance of geopolitical power. But the book is not a polemic. Rather, it’s a nonfiction thriller — equal parts “The China Syndrome” and “Mission Impossible”….If any book can make general audiences grok the silicon age — and finally recognize how it rivals the atomic age for drama and import — Chip War is it.”
—New York Times

“A riveting history of the semiconductor by Chris Miller, a historian at Tufts University…His volume could not be better timed…[features] vivid accounts [and] colorful characters.”
—Financial Times

“In Chip War, his elegant new book, Chris Miller of Tufts University shows how economic, geopolitical and technological forces shaped this essential industry… For those seeking to understand it better, Chip War is a fine place to start.”
—The Economist

“Fascinating…A historian by training, Miller walks the reader through decades of semiconductor history – a subject that comes to life thanks to [his] use of colorful anecdotes…Chip War makes clear that the battle for the multi-billion-dollar struggle for semiconductor supremacy in an increasingly-digitized world will only intensify in the years to come.”
—Forbes

“The most interesting book [I have] read all year.”
—Ryan Heath, writing in Politico’s “Global Insider”

“An insightful history… Well-researched and incisive, this is a noteworthy look at the intersection of technology, economics, and politics.”
—Publisher's Weekly

“An important wake-up call with solid historical context…America’s tech lead is shrinking, so the time has come to develop policies to ensure that the secret machinery of the digital era continues to operate smoothly…Miller’s implicit message to U.S. policymakers is to recognize the danger and act accordingly.”
—Kirkus Reviews

"Miller uncovers the complex history of the microchip...Touching on U.S.-China relations, globalization, and the microchip industry, this insightful book is key to understanding the chip's power in shaping all aspects of society in the U.S. and the world at large."
—Booklist

About the Author

Chris Miller is Assistant Professor of International History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He also serves as Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Eurasia Director at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and as a Director at Greenmantle, a New York and London-based macroeconomic and geopolitical consultancy. He is the author of three previous books—Putinomics,The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy, and We Shall Be Masters—and he frequently writes for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Interest, and other outlets. He received a PhD in history from Yale University and a BA in history from Harvard University. Visit his website at ChristopherMiller.net and follow him on Twitter @CRMiller1.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09RX5F238
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner (October 4, 2022)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 4, 2022
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 20859 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 463 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #10,037 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1 in Microprocessors & System Design
- #1 in International Economics (Kindle Store)
- #3 in Computers & Technology (Kindle Store)

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Chris Miller

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Chris Miller teaches International History at Fletcher School at Tufts University. He is also Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Eurasia Research Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is regularly quoted in publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, is featured on CNBC and NPR, and writes for publications like Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. He is author of three books: Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia, The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy and We Shall Be Masters: Russian Pivots to East Asia from Peter the Great to Putin. He received his PhD and MA from Yale University and his AB in history from Harvard University. For more information, see www.christophermiller.net

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Don't Read Much Fiction

Shifts the fault lines of AI theory and geopolitics - Literally and Figuratively

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 15, 2023

Verified Purchase

Producing advanced technology requires more than a set of instructions. In today’s world, we hear about reverse engineering and technology espionage of the most advanced tech, often extracted from the research halls or computer servers of U.S. facilities. But Chris Miller’s “Chip War” clarifies and corrects common misconceptions about cheap and “easy” reverse engineering. Cheap, maybe yes. But if there is an advanced computer chip involved, not easy and likely not a copy at all.

As of 2021, the most advanced logic chips, also known as semiconductors, were produced in only two companies, Samsung and TSMC located in the Republic of Korea and Taiwan respectively. The various phases of chip production, research, design, fabrication and installation are shared between dozens of companies across North America, Asia and Europe. But the most advanced chips require the precision tooling made available by only one company located in the Netherlands.

As Chris Miller explains, the “Chip War” is about understanding the risks of globalized supply chains, the importance of specially-funded research and the tenacity to keep up in a game where any system that relies on a chip can be outdated, obsolete or out-maneuvered by the following generation of chips. Chip capacity doubles in processing speed and memory capacity every two years. Known as “Moore’s Law” after one of the seminal researchers of early chip development, chip designers continue to find ways to replace key ingredients, carve or lase smaller grooves onto silicon wafers and double the processing power of every day gadgets and the latest Artificial Intelligence-enabled weapons systems. Since at least 2019, the processing power increase has doubled every six months!

The book's subtitle hints at the fact that winning the access, if not harnessing control of the latest chip generation, is critical to maintaining dominance not only on the battle field but on the trading floor and the farthest reaches of space exploration. It is not an understatement to suggest that the Soviet Union lost the cold war due to its inability to keep pace with computer chip advances. Today, Russia is 100% dependent on non-Russian companies to supply its advanced chips and decades behind in designing and fabricating today’s most advanced chips.

The same is not exactly said for China. But like other advanced technologies, self-sufficiency requires a robust system of interconnected education structures, research, production feedback, creativity and a healthy dose of business risk aversion coupled with massive injects of investment capital. Here in 2023, China had still not built an indigenous capacity necessary to produce and keep up with the latest advances in chip production; which is also a critical component in AI.

It’s not enough to describe the contemporary Chip War without understanding the complexity and fascinating history of the chip’s development. I like how Miller begins his book describing the WWII and post-WWII era of computing and the space race that spurred the advances in chip making. The early book chapters help provide context for why simply stealing and studying a chip is not enough to replicate it. And given Moore’s Law, replication will always leave a company or product years behind in competitive capability.

NASA was the first to provide monetary incentive for the early chip giants with the chips enabling better and better rocket technology. The US Department of Defense then took the helm in catalyzing the chip race. The DoD was fortunate to have people like Under Secretary of Defense for Research, William Perry, in the 1970’s who understood the complexities and necessities of computer chip applications.

But with global demand came an increasingly complex global supply chain where chip companies died, were bought out, moved out or were pushed out by new companies taking advantage of cheaper production markets, even if the chip design kings remained in the U.S. Japanese companies like Sony, Toshiba, Hitachi and NEC dominated chip production in the 1980s with the Republic of Korea not far behind. Assembly plants popped up in Southeast Asia. The U.S. today is only 2% of the global chip market. China (PRC) and Taiwan are center-stage in the so-called chip wars.

China is still unable to produce the most sophisticated chips, relying on an ironic geo-political reality, Taiwan, for the majority of its advanced chips. In 2015, China and Taiwan’s chip sectors almost merged under massive political and economic pressure from the People’s Republic of China but today the mood and posturing is much different. Taiwan has friends who increasingly understand the importance not only of Taiwan’s democracy and autonomy but also its irreplaceable tech contributions.

Unlike nuclear technology which has not changed much in decades, chip technology as it contributes to ever-faster computing, forming the “synapses” of 5/6G and AI, is the real game changer and the ultimate “weapon” to win any war or contribute to humanity's development, as Chris Miller would have us believe. I highly suggest your read the book for yourself and begin contemplating how semiconductor production could be as geo-politically powerful as crude oil extraction. It certainly shifts the fault lines of thought and geography.

15 people found this helpful

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Chips: The New Oil

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 16, 2023

Verified Purchase

Tufts professor Chris Miller makes a strong case that computer chips have become to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century in terms of global politics. Computer chips are now ubiquitous and have uncountable applications in industry, consumer products and military hardware. We found that out when pandemic related supply shortages shut down production in a host of industries.

Miller plows over old ground with his discussion of the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs in 1947 to the co-invention of the integrated circuit in 1956 by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Bob Noyce who would go on to lead Intel. He then goes on to discuss the “traitorous eight” who bail out of Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968 to for what was to become the Intel behemoth. They all wanted to get rich.

The government plays a major role in supporting the industry. The need to reduce the weight of the Minuteman missile sent the Pentagon scurrying to buy integrated circuits from Texas Instruments. As the Cold War heats up more and more integrated circuits find their way into military hardware. I remember in 1967 when I was working for Litton Industries, I first noticed integrated circuits appearing in airborne guidance and control systems.

Not mentioned in the book, Texas Instruments benefited from the Kennedy/Johnson White Houses sending defense contracts to Texas and New England. Silicon Valley in California was left out in the cold, but more than compensated by going after the lucrative civilian market.

To me most interesting was the role of Texas Instruments engineer Morris Chang who invented chip production processes. When he was passed over to be president of the company he moves to Taiwan and is instrumental in establishing Taiwan Semiconductor, now the largest manufacturer of chips in the world. Who knows what would have become of Texas Instruments if he became its president.

It is Morris Chang who makes Taiwan a semiconductor powerhouse and that is the reason why most of the world’s chips are made there today. Being located 100 miles from China is not exactly the safest place in world to manufacture this critical commodity. It is for this reason there now is a move to diversify production to other sources including the huge U.S. government subsidies now being funneled into the domestic chip industry.

Because both the Russians and the Chinese understand how critical computer chips are, they established their own industries. The Russians did what they do best which was to copy the west, but with the technology advancing so quickly that became a failing strategy. China, on the other hand, is making a huge investment in their own chip industry to wean their economy’s dependence on western made chips and equipment. In case of the latter there was a story today where Chinese spies obtained secrets from ASML, the Dutch monopoly supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment. Their machines are essential in the manufacture of chips and cost $100 million apiece.

The saddest part of the book is Miller recounting the decline of Intel. It seems the bean counters took over from the engineers. In 2008 Intel turned down Steve Jobs’ offer to them to make chips for the I-Phone ceding the market to Qualcomm. Thus, Intel was nowhere in communication chips, and it is being rapidly displaced in the server market by graphics processing chips being made by NVIDIA and AMD.

Miller’s book reads like a fast-paced business thriller. There are great anecdotes and reader will learn much about what will shape geopolitics this decade and beyond.

12 people found this helpful

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Américo

An impressive view about power in the world

Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on May 11, 2023

Verified Purchase

The author presents in this book one of the most important things in our daily - chip - and how we are reliant about it. Like food and water, chips are essential for mankind and rule a world balance of power.

Guilebaldo Gutierrez

Un libro excelente para entender la situación actual de la "crisis de semiconductores"

Reviewed in Mexico 🇲🇽 on April 18, 2023

Verified Purchase

El libro narra los inicios del desarrollo del negocio de los semiconductores (chips electrónicos), las personas y
sus situaciones que fueron los pioneros en el desarrollo tecnológico y empresarial de los semiconductores. El impacto de éste desarrollo en la historia y la situación mundial actual.

One person found this helpful

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Cliente Amazon

Ottimo libro, molto esaustivo, un'occhio sulla geopolitica dei computer.

Reviewed in Italy 🇮🇹 on June 18, 2023

Verified Purchase

Veramente capace nello spiegare la storia e l'attuale situazione geopolitica del mondo dei chip e semiconduttori. Benché sia abbastanza informato sull'argomento ho trovato nuovi ed interessanti fatti, nonché una bella rinfrescata su nozioni che già avevo.
Sono rimasto davvero sorpreso.

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Data Security Science

Da leggere ora (tra qualche tempo non sarà più attuale)

Reviewed in Italy 🇮🇹 on March 17, 2023

Verified Purchase

Da leggere ora, per capire storia e attualità del mercato dei semiconduttori; tra qualche tempo non sarà necessariamente più attuale.

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Petar Marendic

A whirlwind of semiconductor manufacturing history

Reviewed in the Netherlands 🇳🇱 on October 10, 2022

Verified Purchase

A well written and engaging history of semiconductors. It had me gripped from start to finish. As someone who works in the semiconductor industry I spotted a few mistakes, but overall it is very well researched. However, this is primarily a history book and is very light on technical details.

Where I was left disappointed is the paucity of insight into China’s drive for semiconductor self sufficiency. I was hoping to learn more about China's manufacturing equipment companies, where they stand and what their prospects are for the future. As such it is difficult to draw any insight into how the ongoing trade war with the US may progress. Another gripe I had with the book is that it offered a rather simplified explanation of the decline of Japan's semiconductor industry without much insight into the technical reasons why Japan was unable to keep up with Korea.

As a final critique, my hard cover copy came with no references to the notes at the back of the book. This is a major oversight by the publisher.

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