Notes

Manufacturing the weapons of the new Cold War. The device you’re reading these words on contains maybe the most important military technology in the world: the semiconductor chip. Not only does it power critical drivers of the emerging global economy, such as AI and big data; every piece of advanced military hardware relies on these little wafers—typically, thousands of them.

So in October 2022, the United States imposed a ban on exports of top-end chips and chip-making equipment to China, aiming to slow its economic and defense growth. Since then, the U.S. has struck deals with all five manufacturers of cutting-edge chips to build new plants in the United States—announcing the fifth and final of them, with South Korea’s SK Hynix, in early August.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has been building up its own semiconductor industry—and Huawei, the country’s leading chip firm, recently said it had developed a chip as good as any made in the West. So who’s got the upper hand here? Today, Chris Miller looks at the state of play in the struggle for supremacy over the technology that could determine the coming balance of global power.

—Michael Bluhm