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

by Chris Miller

Overview

One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2023

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).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982172022
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	10/04/2022
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	27,774
File size:	19 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

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. 

 

Editorial Reviews

08/29/2022

International affairs analyst Miller (We Shall Be Masters) offers an insightful history of the global competition for control of the silicon chip industry. Chips, also known as semiconductors and integrated circuits, are embedded in every device that requires computing, Miller explains. He delves into the historical links between the U.S. military and Silicon Valley; the nurturing of relations between American companies and chip manufacturers and designers in Asia; and the ascendancy of the Taiwanese semiconductor industry thanks to a former Texas Instruments executive who founded the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., in 1987. Miller also explains how Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution put China’s chip industry far behind its neighbors’, and tracks the rise of Chinese tech giant Huawei thanks to the advice of IBM consultants and technology transfers from such American companies as Qualcomm. Since the early 2000s, China has devoted billions to developing its technological industries through subsidies and the theft of intellectual property, setting the stage for Huawei, a leader in 5G technology, to potentially rival Silicon Valley’s influence by 2030. Miller makes clear that rising tensions between the U.S. and China over Taiwan pose a grave threat to global semiconductor supply chains, and ominously predicts that future wars will be determined by computing power. Well-researched and incisive, this is a noteworthy look at the intersection of technology, economics, and politics. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Financial Times Business Book of the Year
An Economist Best Book of the Year
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year
New York Times Bestseller
#1 on Fortune’s Spring CEO Survey of the Best Book They’ve Read in the Past Year
Winner 2023 PROSE Award for Outstanding Work by a Trade Publisher
Winner of the Arthur Ross Book Award
Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize

“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

“At once edifying and entertaining...Miller is a fluent narrator.”
—Foreign Affairs

“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

From the Publisher

05/01/2022

Running everything from missiles to cars to the electric grid itself, microchip technology is foundational in the modern world, and the United States once dominated the market with the speediest chips. But Miller, an assistant professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts, points out that it's been losing firepower to Taiwan, Korea, and Europe, with China eager to join the fray.

Library Journal

2022-07-30
How the U.S. lost its lead in the crucial area of microchip manufacturing and how it might be reclaimed.

Without microchips, entire industries can grind to a halt. “Most of the world’s GDP is produced with devices that rely on semiconductors,” writes Miller, who teaches international history at Tufts. “For a product that didn’t exist seventy-five years ago, this is an extraordinary ascent.” While it was primarily American scientists and entrepreneurs who created the industry, American chip manufacturing has lagged behind in recent years. Production happens in surprisingly few places, with one of the most important being Taiwan, where the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company provides 37% of the world’s logic chips and 11% of the world’s memory chips. Miller notes that in the early years of chip manufacture, when most of the painstaking work was done by hand, high labor costs in the U.S. pushed producers to look overseas, first to Japan. But then Japan became a major competitor. An answer was to undercut the Japanese firms by finding countries with even lower labor costs, such as South Korea and Taiwan. Eventually, those countries became competitors as well as partners. American tech firms were willing to send chip manufacture offshore so they could focus on their strengths of innovation and design. Apple, for example, is a major user of chips but makes absolutely none. As Miller shows, the problem with this globalization strategy is China, which has long sought to build its own chip industry, with mixed results. From Beijing’s perspective, Taiwan’s chip factories make the island an even more tempting target. Though the author doesn’t make any clear policy proposals, his implicit message to U.S. policymakers is to recognize the danger and act accordingly. 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.

An important wake-up call with solid historical context.

Kirkus Reviews