***Winner of the 2022 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award***

'Pulse quickening. A nonfiction thriller - equal parts The China Syndrome and Mission Impossible' New York Times 

An epic account of the decades-long battle to control the world's most critical resource—microchip technology

Power in the modern world - military, economic, geopolitical - is built on a foundation of computer chips. America has maintained its lead as a superpower because it has dominated advances in computer chips and all the technology that chips have enabled. (Virtually everything runs on chips: cars, phones, the stock market, even the electric grid.) Now that edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by the naïve assumption that globalising the chip industry and letting players in Taiwan, Korea and Europe take over manufacturing serves America's interests. Currently, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more on chips than any other product, is pouring billions into a chip-building Manhattan Project to catch up to the US. 

In Chip War economic historian Chris Miller recounts the fascinating sequence of events that led to the United States perfecting chip design, and how faster chips helped defeat the Soviet Union (by rendering the Russians’ arsenal of precision-guided weapons obsolete). The battle to control this industry will shape our future. China spends more money importing chips than buying oil, and they are China's greatest external vulnerability as they are fundamentally reliant on foreign chips. But with 37 per cent of the global supply of chips being made in Taiwan, within easy range of Chinese missiles, the West's fear is that a solution may be close at hand. 

'A riveting history. Features vivid accounts and colourful characters' Financial Times

'Fascinating…A historian by training, Miller walks the reader through decades of semiconductor history – a subject that comes to life thanks to [his] use of colorful anecdotes' Forbes 

'Indispensable' Niall Ferguson

"‘A nonfiction thriller — equal parts “The China Syndrome” and “Mission Impossible"… If any book can make general audiences and finally recognize how [the silicon age] rivals the atomic age for drama and import — Chip War is it’ " - New York Times

"'A riveting history of the semiconductor...a compelling book that explains a very complicated industry in digestible fashion...His volume could not be better timed.'" - Financial Times

"'Chip War makes a whale of a case: that the chip industry now determines both the structure of the global economy and the balance of geopolitical power. But the book is not a polemic. Rather, it’s a non-fiction thriller - equal parts The China Syndrome and Mission Impossible... If any book can make general audiences grok the silicon age - and finally recognise how it rivals the atomic age for drama and import - Chip War is it. " - New York Times

"'An important wake-up call with solid historical context'" - Kirkus

"'An insightful history. Well-researched and incisive, this is a noteworthy look at the intersection of technology, economics, and politics'" - Publishers Weekly

"'This insightful book is key to understanding the chip's power in shaping all aspects of society in the U.S. and the world at large'" - Booklist

"Chris Miller’s riveting history of semiconductors explains why America is feeling vulnerable" - Financial Times