Thursday, April 20, 2023

Book Review - Chip War

Title - Chip War
Author: Chris Miller
Rating: 👍👍👍👍👍
My Review: Awesome book describing the evolution of computer chips and how it has affected so many things in our daily lives.

Description (Audible): 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 number one 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 technology works and why it’s so important, recounting the fascinating events that led to the United States perfecting the chip design, and to America’s victory in the Cold War by using faster chips to render the Soviet Union’s arsenal of precision-guided weapons obsolete. But lately, America has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, leading to a worldwide chip shortage and a new war brewing with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap.

Description (ChatGPT): Chip War is the ultimate high-stakes thriller—except instead of spies and secret missions, it’s about microchips, the invisible engines of the modern world. Chris Miller dives into the geopolitical chess game over semiconductors, showing how these tiny bits of silicon have become the new gold, oil, and military strategy all rolled into one. It’s part tech history, part economic battlefield, and all eye-opening. Miller weaves together the rise of global tech giants, the U.S.-China rivalry, and the high-tech arms race in a way that’s as addictive as a good spy novel—except the spies are engineers and the espionage happens in data centers and factory floors. Whether you’re a tech geek or just someone who uses a smartphone, Chip War will make you rethink everything you know about the world’s most powerful—and most fragile—commodity. A fascinating, fast-paced read about a subject that’s as small as it is mighty.