Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology

It was only sixty years ago that the number of transistors on a cutting-edge chip wasn’t 11.8 billion, but 4. In

Last year, the chip industry produced more transistors than the combined quantity of all goods produced by all other companies, in all other industries, in all human history.

Around a quarter of the chip industry’s revenue comes from phones; much of the price of a new phone pays for the semiconductors inside. For the past decade, each generation of iPhone has been powered by one of the world’s most advanced processor chips. In total, it takes over a dozen semiconductors to make a smartphone work, with different chips ma

China now spends more money each year importing chips than it spends on oil.

“When a Chinese firm said, ‘Let’s open a joint venture,’ ” one European semiconductor executive explained. “I heard, ‘Let’s lose money.’ ”

“When a Chinese firm said, ‘Let’s open a joint venture,’ ” one European semiconductor executive explained. “I heard, ‘Let’s lose money.’ ”