From behind the shadows of stainless-steel microwaves, digital clocks, and pompously dubbed “smart” refrigerators, a war rages on– an unconventional war, won not by the measure of bloodshed, the prestige of sacrifice, or the negligence of the innocent, but rather by the depth of government pockets. As a rapidly industrializing world stumbles headfirst into a new technological era, global superpowers US and China find themselves scrambling to the Holy Grail, the new currency of geopolitical power: microchips.

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Made of a richly abundant element in the Earth’s crust capable of controlling electric pulses when alloyed with phosphorus, silicon chips were destined for a spot on the engineer’s mantle. Egregiously simplified, a microchip or semiconductor is a collection of digital circuitry embedded on a flat piece of silicon containing transistors that can control tiny pulses of electric current, and the more transistors, the more powerful the microchip. Packing a CPUs computing power into a silicon sliver the size of a coin, the sheer versatility of the microchip enabled devices caught the eyes of the American public, venture capitalist groups, and Uncle Sam himself. By the late 20th century, nation-sweeping microchip fever found its way into every piece of technology, massive or mundane. The same 8-bit magic that could transmit moving pictures to paneled glass and combine two numbers into one had become the envy of the American military, their spearhead into a new era of sophisticated, high-tech weaponry.

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An ocean away, East Asian countries (namely Japan, China, and Taiwan) continued to smile, wave, and steal occasional glances from their maritime neighbor’s homework. Growing comfortable with their microchip proficiency, government subsidized Japanese tech companies learned to cheaply manufacture and sell chips back to the United States, hoping to cash in on the microchip gold rush. In doing so, they’re slapped with a 100% import tax on Japanese chips (by the Free Economics Champion himself, Ronald Reagan) completely crippling their microchip industry. Diligently watching from afar with a growing GDP and ambition, Taiwan also wanted to dip their hands into the microchip trade, but not at the expense of the US slitting their wrists in the process. Analyzing their geopolitical dilemma, they came up with the perfect solution.

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By propping up student engineers with tech firms, Taiwan would develop its own chip industry to become the conqueror of the microchip Achilles Heel: the painstaking, expensive, and tedious production of microchips in a purely sterilized environment. With their newfound mastery of microchip manufacture, they would become the main supplier for microchips to the US, not only boosting their economy, but guaranteeing them an alliance and protection from their territorial neighbor China, who had threatened to invade Taiwan more than once. Taiwan’s plan worked flawlessly and in a matter of years, it became a crucial part of the global microchip supply chain, allowing American chip companies to focus purely on design and software, reliant on Taiwan for its stock. As a sole consumer in this scheme, China was firmly in a position of weakness, growing increasingly reliant on their pesky neighbor Taiwan and eternal rival US to remain relevant in the modern military landscape. In a similar fashion to oil in the past, the US treated microchip exports to China as leverage, a bargaining chip used to keep their foreign policy in check. But a rude awakening was on the horizon.

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On the morning of 19th November 2021, American generals awoke to shocking news: the Chinese government had conducted tests of a new hypersonic ballistic missile system that flew across the world at five times the speed of sound. The twist? The missile targeting system operated on American microchips. By supplying Chinese private tech companies with the design, software, and tools to develop their own microchip trade, the US inadvertently fueled the rise of the Chinese military. In response, the Biden administration immediately clamped down on all American chipmakers, blocking any and all microchip exports to China, cutting them off from the microchip supply chain and covering any damages to their local microchip industry with billion-dollar payouts to Intel and Texas Instruments.

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The development of the microchip industry has become yet another vehicle for political controversy and economic interdependence, signifying that perhaps globalization may not be all that it's cracked up to be. As many overworked and underappreciated International Relations majors could attest to, microchips are taking the path of oil and natural gas, dictating the course of foreign relations for years to come. Though many may not realize it yet, a new era of geopolitics has been carved onto these tiny strips of metal.

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Written by Ali Khan

Edited by Anushka Roy

Designed by Chinmayi Gaur