Chip War

The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology

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Chip War

By: Chris Miller

Narrated by: Stephen Graybill

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About this listen

***Winner of the 2022 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award***
***Selected as one of Barack Obama's Favourite Books of 2023***

'Pulse quickening. A nonfiction thriller - equal parts The China Syndrome and Mission Impossible' New York Times

An epic account of the decades-long battle to control the world's most critical resource—microchip technology

Power in the modern world - military, economic, geopolitical - is built on a foundation of computer chips. America has maintained its lead as a superpower because it has dominated advances in computer chips and all the technology that chips have enabled. (Virtually everything runs on chips: cars, phones, the stock market, even the electric grid.) Now that edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by the naïve assumption that globalising the chip industry and letting players in Taiwan, Korea and Europe take over manufacturing serves America's interests. Currently, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more on chips than any other product, is pouring billions into a chip-building Manhattan Project to catch up to the US.

In Chip War economic historian Chris Miller recounts the fascinating sequence of events that led to the United States perfecting chip design, and how faster chips helped defeat the Soviet Union (by rendering the Russians’ arsenal of precision-guided weapons obsolete). The battle to control this industry will shape our future. China spends more money importing chips than buying oil, and they are China's greatest external vulnerability as they are fundamentally reliant on foreign chips. But with 37 per cent of the global supply of chips being made in Taiwan, within easy range of Chinese missiles, the West's fear is that a solution may be close at hand.

'A riveting history. Features vivid accounts and colourful characters' Financial Times

'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' Forbes

'Indispensable' Niall Ferguson©2022 Christopher Miller. All rights reserved. (P)2022 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

International

Military

War

United States

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Critic reviews

'Miller [argues that] the future of humanity hinges on the "chip war" between two ecosystems vying to design and make the most advanced micro-processors - that of the United States and its friends (including Taiwan), and that of the People’s Republic of China. . . The result is an indispensable book.' (Niall Ferguson, author of Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe)

'Chip War is essential for understanding our modern world…With a sweeping narrative that captures the people who risked a lot and made it all happen, Chris Miller tells how our chip-powered world has been shaped by constant battles - among innovators and technologies, among companies, among countries, and now, of critical importance, in the great power competition between the United States and China that will define the future of geopolitics.' (Daniel Yergin, Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Prize: the Epic Struggle for Oil, Money and Power)

'A riveting history of the semiconductor...a compelling book that explains a very complicated industry in digestible fashion...His volume could not be better timed.' (Demetri Sevastopulo)

'A remarkable book…The devil is in the details, and it is there where Chris Miller is at his best…An eye-popping work, a unique combination of economic and technological - and strategic - analysis.' (Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers)

Most relevant

Perhaps a slow start for listeners who are already reasonably familiar with the history of semiconductors. I skipped 20 chapters directly into the 90s.

Slow start