It may be one of the most important stress tests of influence on the world’s geopolitical stage but, when it comes to the battle for supremacy in the world of semiconductors, few of us put them on a footing with traditional commodities. We take it as read that oil influences global economic prosperity and international stability, and yet we seem unconcerned that China spends more on importing chips from Taiwan than it does on oil.
As Chris Miller points out in his compelling ‘Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology' (Simon & Schuster, £20, ISBN 9781398504097), with everything – from consumer gadgets to automobiles, stock exchanges to power grids – relying on the ubiquitous integrated circuit, when markets become politicised the modern world finds its foundations, to use his word, ‘fragile’.
Miller’s premise is straightforward enough: while China tries to outmanoeuvre the rest of the world in the chip market in pursuit of a...