Chris Miller is by far one of the most talented political scientists to have emerged from the United States (US) in the last ten years.
The fact that he has chosen to teach in The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, which is barely a stone’s throw away from Harvard and MIT, suggests that Chris Miller remains in touch with the academic and research fraternity of these institutions, not excluding other institutions in the Ivy League and the New England seaboard.
The “Chip War,” divided into 54 Chapters, excluding the Introduction and Conclusion, is a masterpiece into the history and sciences of the semi-conductor too.
Any reader who seeks to understand what is a semi-conductor or a microchip, many of which are now seared into the fabric of modern and post modern life, cannot but walk away impressed by the clarity of the explanation.
This, in turn, leads to a peek into the biography of some of the most exceptional engineering and scientific minds of the last century.
Morris Chang, for example, is a Harvard graduate, who continues to have a larger than life presence in the Taiwan Semiconductor Multinational Corporation (TSMC).
TSMC is one of the bare few entities that can produce the most advanced 0.3 to 0.7 nanometers semi conductor chips.
That Morris Chang, who is already well into his late 90s, continues to hold sway in the highest end of the semi conductor industry, is nothing short of amazing. Indeed, Chris Miller’s work was able to capture the importance of Morris Chang.
Rather, it was able to grasp the key personalities of other brilliant minds in the field, which makes the book an entertaining read.
Elsewhere, Chris Miller touched on the role of Gordon Moore, exponent of the ‘Moore’s Law, ‘ William Shockley, Walter Brattain, John Bardeen and Akio Morita. Not forgetting the many outstanding scientists in the erstwhile Soviet Union too.
Of which the semi conductor program of the latter was spawned by two American scientists, born in New York, who were part of the Soviet espionage ring in the US.
At any rate, the gist of the book is simple. With the US and China squaring off in everything from trade conflict to theater preponderance in the Global North and Global South, what would be the net outcome of the future world order ?
Would the US and its allies come out on top, or, alternatively, China and the security allies with which Beijing has backed ?
Chris Miller is a talented writer in the sense that “The Chip War” was able to dangle the severity of this intense hyper competition yet did not give away the script to say whose science and technology shall prevail.
The lack of clarity in giving the ‘Game of Throne’ away is telling. In that the US and China may, from time to time, approach their relationship from the standpoint and necessity of detente: the relaxation of tensions.
That indeed was what the US and the Soviet Union had once tried to do in the mid 1970s, especially after the Helsinki Summit in 1975, and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, that allowed the reunification of Germany.
Only that when the US and the EU relaxed its tensions on the Soviet Union in 1989, the Soviet Union had broken up into a ramparts of 14 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on December 26 1991. For what it is worth, while the Warsaw Pact is gone, the CIS remains as an institution in Moscow to this day—-only that President Vladimir Putin appears to be more obssessed with regaining the allegiances of all the ex Eastern European states.
Many of which had decided to either work with or integrate with the European Union (EU).
The most pronounced battle of Russia being the war against Ukraine, which broke out on February 24 2022.
While Chris Miller did not factor the role of Russia as a future center of production of the semi conductor chip, it is interesting to note that Soviet Union had grasped the importance of this sector as early as 1962.
The focus on China as the only peer of the US is thus unique. It is almost as if the academic and engineering communities had written off Russia altogether. But then again one could perhaps understand why granted the thorough research of Chris Miller.
The center of the productions of the microchips, with some of the advanced ones, smaller than even a human cell, invariably, the Coronavirus, is a powerful testament to how far along East Asia has come of age. How is this the case ?
Aside from Taiwan, some of the major centers of production are in South Korea, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. With China producing 1.5 percent of the chips, albeit mostly “low tech.”
To which Chris Miller nevertheless affirmed that with the help of the Chinese government, semiconductor industry of China is making great leaps too.
With the introduction of the Huawei Mate 60 Smartphone in September 2023, based on the 0.7 nanometer chip, China seems to have skirted the chip sanctions imposed on it by the Biden Administration’s Chip Act; including the ban placed by the US on ASML in Netherlands.
The latter is one of the top three lithography machine makers, formed of more than 100,00 components, to specialize in the design of the most advanced chips. ASML dominates up to 90 percent of the world’s advanced global chip production capacity.
One can look forward to the revised edition of the “The Chip War,” with many more books on the same theme to dominate the market. The future edition of any variety of “The Chip War” would have to explain how did Huawei manage to achieve its 0.7 nanometer break through ?
For now, the US and its allies remain in the lead with the IPhone 15 that has incorporated the use of the 0.5 nanometer chips into its latest launch.
Although scientific experts the world over affirmed that Huawei’s chip is several years behind that of Apple’s 1Phone 15, the world of geo-politics and geo-economics are quite capable of throwing out many more surprises. It is for this reason and this reason alone that Chris Miller’s book and scholarship at The Fletcher School has had millions checking up on his work, not intermittently, but regularly. Seeking an Oracle to explain—–ahead of time—-just how will the Sino US high end competiton pans out ?
This book is a must have in the sense that everyone is caught fairly in the Sino US competition. Many people do have an Android or IPhone in their hands. With China banning all state owned enterprises (SOES) and public officials from having an IPhone, this is a serious reflection of how personal the “The Chip War” can be. In this sense, Chris Miller’s book is a gripping book on the new age bases on the ancient rivalry of trying to up the ante of another dominant player on world stage and in the cyberspace. All major and small powers are indeed on their respective war footing, making sure that they do not make the wrong bets. Many are making their bets both way, such as Singapore and Malaysia, with both telling the US and China not to allow their antagonism to go from bad to worse to affect the global public good: peace.