The Battle to Control Microchip Supplies Will Define the Twenty-First Century
Semiconductors are as important for global capitalism today as access to energy resources. Only a handful of countries can produce the most advanced microchips, and control over their supply is becoming a key battleground in the US-China trade war.
Workers gather for a ceremony that marks the beginning of bulk production of advanced 3-nanometer chips at a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. facility in Tainan, Taiwan, on December 29, 2022. (Lam Yik Fei / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
If energy resources are the heart of global capitalism, pumping fuel around its body to keep it accumulating, its brain is made up of trillions of semiconductors. Cars, bombs, phones, refrigerators, even energy systems — today, they all rely on the computer processing power of chips. Without semiconductors in the information age, capitalism would be brain dead.
Is it more critical for capital and its various nation-states to guarantee a sufficient supply of energy resources or of semiconductors? In his new book Chip War, Chris Miller makes a compelling case for the latter:
Unlike oil, which can be bought from many countries, our production of computing power depends fundamentally on a series of choke points: tools, chemicals, and software that are often produced by a handful of companies — and sometimes only by one. No other facet of the economy is so dependent on so few firms.
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