The politicians know nothing about technology. All those political rhetorics and sanctions, the technology companies worked behind it.
Chris Miller’s book “
Chip War,” winner of the
Financial Times business book of the year award, could not have been published at a more opportune time. At its publication date in October 2022, the world was emerging from a crippling COVID-19 pandemic. Miller’s book should impress on us just how fundamentally essential the chipmaking industry is.
Excerpt part of it.
China is the new Japan
Professor Miller reminds us of something we may have forgotten, or never knew if our memories don’t stretch back that far. In the 1980s, the United States was in a panic over losing technological superiority to Japan. And
it thought it was not a fair fight. Silicon Valley thought Japan’s chip firms “benefitted from intellectual property theft, protected markets, government subsidies, and cheap capital.” Numerous books were written at the time lodging those accusations against Japan and warning, sometimes very shrilly, of the danger.
Sound familiar? The United States now accuses China of the same things.
There was much truth to the accusations that Japan stole intellectual property – as there is that China did. But some of the other accusations were hypocritical. For example, while Japan did benefit from government support, so did the development of the United States’ chip industry – massively. The industry never could have gotten off the ground if it hadn’t been for big contracts in the 1960s from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Defense Department.
In the time of paranoia about Japan in the 1980s, there was even concern that it could become a military threat, despite the fact that Japan’s constitution, imposed on it by the United States after the Second World War, renounces military force as a means to settle international disputes. Says Miller, “If Japan’s success in DRAM chips was any guide, it was set to overtake the United States in almost every industry that mattered. Why wouldn’t it seek military dominance, too? If so, what would the U.S. do?”
Once again, while China’s constitution does not similarly renounce military force, the record shows that China, like Japan – and unlike the United States – has not used military force to settle international disputes, at least not for more than 40 years. But we are paranoid about it anyway ( Thanks to our media).
Once again, while China’s constitution does not similarly renounce military force, the record shows that China, like Japan – and unlike the United States – has not used military force to settle international disputes, at least not for more than 40 years. But we are paranoid about it anyway.
For now, and let us hope for the foreseeable future, both the United States and China are maintaining a posture of “strategic ambiguity” with regard to the status of Taiwan. China – the People’s Republic of China, i.e., mainland China – claims Taiwan as part of itself, and most countries of the world (including the United States) officially agree with that. China reserves the right to incorporate Taiwan militarily if necessary.
It would be even worse if a war knocked out TSMC’s fabs. The world economy and the supply chains that crisscross Asia and the Taiwan Strait are predicated on this precarious peace.