On December 6, US president Joe Biden joined Morris Chang, founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, in Arizona for a symbolic “tool-in” ceremony to mark the latest step in the chipmaker’s investment in a new factory in the US.
Chris Miller could hardly have wished for a better way to underline the timeliness of his book Chip War. On the eve of Biden’s Arizona visit, Miller won the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award. His book is a highly topical history of the development of the semiconductor and how TSMC and a few other manufacturers came to dominate the global supply of advanced microchips.
Chang and Biden appeared in Arizona alongside the chief executives of Apple and Nvidia, two of TSMC’s biggest customers. “Companies like TSMC are facing multiple reasons to rethink the geography of supply chains. And it’s not just politicians calling them . . . but their customers as well,” Miller told the FT this week.