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.

Exceptionally Important Read For Today’s Great Power Competition

This is a seminal work articulating very clearly the heart of the current great power competition. If you want to know what worries senior leaders and industry captains, you want to make this the highest priority read on your list. Great overview of tech development and competition, as well as why tech is the foremost component of the balance of power in the world right now.

Excellent!

Excellent book! Comparable to a Daniel Yergin book on energy. I hope Chris Miller decides to write a follow-up to Chip Wars in the coming years.

What an great book

Gives you the necessary information if you want to start to understand the complexity, necessity, of this wonderful invention . It as well show the greatness of the human mind striving for more freedom.

Excellent overview

Thanks to the authors for an extraordinary overview of this key technology. I only wish that they would have extended a bit more to speculate on future developments, particularly in area of AI.

Wow

Super interesting. I heard someone mention “why do we (the United States) care about Taiwan? I now know a big reason why their sovereignty matters. Great book.

A illuminating story about Chip Industry

I enjoyed the book more for its first half as it walked through the intriguing stories about the computer chips, which we took for granted in our daily life, step by step, went from wizarding gadgets in missiles and satellites, to mass produced goods, and now to the center of geopolitics

Countless hours spent and brilliant personnels with wild visions involved its creation almost makes it heroic and mythological.

The latter half of the book felt however like a CNN news briefing of recent events and predictions, which is less interesting to me, but engaging enough

Overall solid read

Excellent Overview of the History of the Development of Semiconductors and their key role in the post-industrial world.

Required reading for everyone concerned about the US-China relationship and the role of semiconductor dependency on Taiwan in preventing a confrontation. The first 2/3 of the book provides a against history of the development of semi conductors and their core role in the modern world, a story told in more detail elsewhere.

Super Enlightening and Generally Enjoyable

I now feel like I have a much better understanding of the semiconductor industry and it’s intricacies than before. Really enjoyable history of the industry.

Great content and pacing; Enjoyed the narrator

Excellent recent summary of the semiconductor industry and related geopolitical issues. I also found the narrator well paced and easy to understand.

This is the best technology history book ever.

So good. Deep insight into business, geopolitics, physics and innovation. A grand synthesis where at the end you feel a euphoric sense of how everything and everyone is connected through time and geography via chip technology. Sent shivers down my spine as it finished.