Chip War

May 1, 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.

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August 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.

September 1, 2022
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.

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September 15, 2022
Miller (Putinomics, 2018; We Shall Be Masters, 2021), assistant professor of history at Tufts University, uncovers the complex history of the microchip, the critical resource for processing data, used in phones, computers, and elements of airplanes and cars. Miller analyzes the difficulty of manufacturing and procuring these chips, processes that have become highly contentious for global powers like China and the U.S. In Taiwan, for instance, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company produces chips efficiently and precisely, and chips from Taiwan support 37 percent of the world's computing power annually. Drawing on data, archives, reports, and interviews with stakeholders, Miller places the chip as a central force in the global supply chain, and in the potentially catastrophic effects of its disruption. 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.

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