Chip War

The Quest to Dominate the World's Most Critical Technology

By: Chris Miller

Narrated by: Stephen Graybill

Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2023

The Financial Times Business Book of the Year, this epic account of the decades-long battle to control one of the world’s most critical resources—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in fierce competition is “pulse quickening…a nonfiction thriller” (The New York Times).

You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves—runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing. Now, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more on chips than any other product, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America’s military superiority and economic prosperity.

Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the US became dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America’s victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. Until recently, China had been catching up, aligning its chip-building ambitions with military modernization.

Illuminating, timely, and fascinating, Chip War is “an essential and engrossing landmark study" (London Times).

©2022 Christopher Miller. All rights reserved. (P)2022 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

How we got here

Should be required reading for anyone that wants to understand how the world works today.

Brilliant tech angle on geopolitics

Great lesson here for geopolitical strategists. Deep analysis of tech challenge to chip making. Very complementary to Peter Zeihan’s ‘The End of the World is Just the Beginning’.

A series of blog posts with drab narration

The book itself was interesting and the narrative was fun to follow through history. Did lose the forest for the trees at times, but overall a decent read.

The biggest issues were that it felt like a formulaic series of blog posts strung into a book rather than an interwoven narrative. This was highlighted by the slow, droning reader. Had to play at 1.4x to not explode from the 60wpm speech.

Outstanding and compelling

Learned so much about a crucial part of the modern word that is very under appreciated. Highly recommend!

Fascinating

And somewhat terrifying. I’m recommending this to all friends. I was fully locked into this story and feel like I see the world in a whole new way.

28 Years in the Industry

After working on semi conductors for 28 years in the industry. I found this book to be extremely insightful, educational, and entertaining.

Wow.

My father used a slide rule to investigate the structure of clay minerals. Science was mostly done on paper. Now computing power has unleashed the human imagination, for good or perhaps evil. Stay tuned. The book charts the path we have traveled into the Information Age.

Must Listen

Miller has compiled an incredible history of the semiconductor industry and his telling reinforces the notions that the industry is not only vital to national security, but essential to global, if not local economic growth and our species (future) prosperity.

So many moments and decisions that lead us here

Born in the 60s, I remember a lot of these events from the 70s, 80s and 90s that brought us here. I could not stop listening and remembering as I was working in IT watching these events unfold and wondering why we did the things we did. My children will never know a world without computers, the internet mobile phones and the ability to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world. To the traitorous 8, and especially Gordon Moore, thank you. Thank you for your contributions and helping me decide what I wanted to do for a living. And to Chris Miller, thank you for an excellent book. I enjoyed it immensely.

It all relies on Taiwan not being invaded by China.

Very eye-opening on the chip industry. Hoping progress will continue to be made and that we don’t go extinct because of it.