The world runs on chips you've never seen, made in places most people have never considered - until they disappear.
A handful of factories in Taiwan, South Korea, and the Netherlands produce virtually every advanced semiconductor on Earth. When COVID-19 fractured that delicate supply chain in 2020, auto plants across three continents went dark for lack of components costing a few dollars. When the United States imposed sweeping export controls on China in 2022, it triggered a geopolitical earthquake that permanently shifted the balance of global power. And as artificial intelligence devours ever-greater quantities of processing power, the race to control chip manufacturing has become the defining contest of our era.
This sweeping narrative traces the full arc of the semiconductor revolution - from the transistor's birth at Bell Labs in 1947 and Silicon Valley's improbable rise, to the engineering miracle of extreme ultraviolet lithography, the US-China chip war, and the trillion-dollar scramble to rebuild domestic manufacturing across America, Europe, Japan, and India.
It is a story of engineering genius, national ambition, corporate daring, and geopolitical brinkmanship - all fought over the one resource that will determine who holds power in the twenty-first century.
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