How we got here, why they matter, and what our technological future will look like

“Chip Wars”

Computer chips have taken center stage in the current geopolitical conflicts. Many debates tend to depict these issues as new challenges, but they are not. The geopolitics of computer chips has a deep and complicated history. In this sixth event of our “Geopolitics of Technology” series, we will discuss how decades of globalization have built and re-built our supply chains; why and how states have always played a key role in chip markets; and how and why concepts of economic, political and military power intersect particularly in this technological field.

The European Union, the United States, China, Russia, and the Asian industrial powers of Taiwan, South Korean and Japan jostle for technological dominance in the global supply chains, market control, and access to cutting-edge technologies. Indeed, vigorous state interventions have begun to profoundly reshape the way computer chips are developed and produced – with major effects on the global geography of chip markets.

The EU, the U.S. and China have embarked on large-scale industrial policy initiatives to reduce technological and economic interdependencies and enhance national control. They seem to agree that securing (or establishing) global technological leadership is the key to power in the international system.

The U.S. has mobilized its export controls to keep the Chinese chip industry behind. Denial of computer chips also plays a major role in the economic sanctions against Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. And the political intricacies of the Taiwan question are exacerbated by the fact that it is the global center of chip production.

This evening we will only discuss where we are and how we came here. We will also attempt to assess where we are headed. Will the present “chip wars” pave the way to the de-globalization and national compartmentalization of technology? Will they contribute to the escalation of the simmering political conflicts between the EU, the U.S. and China?

About the speaker

Cyrus Mody is Professor of the History of Science, Technology, and Innovation at Maastricht University. He is the author of three monographs, including The Long Arm of Moore’s Law: Microelectronics and American Science (2017, MIT Press) and The Squares: US Physical and Engineering Scientists in the Long 1970s. He is currently PI of the NWO Vici project Managing Scarcity and Sustainability, on the oil industry’s involvement in alternative energy and environmental governance in the 1970s and ’80s; and he is a co-PI of the ERC Synergy project NanoBubbles, which looks at the difficulties scientists face in correcting the scientific record.

Raluca Csernatoni is a Research Fellow working on the nexus between European defence and emerging technologies at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, Belgium. She is currently a Guest Professor on European Security and Defence with the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) of the Brussels School of Governance (BSoG), at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium. Her co-edited book, Emerging Security Technologies and EU Governance: Actors, Practices and Processes, was published with Routledge Studies in Conflict, Security and Technology Series in 2020.

Mario Daniels is since 2020 the DAAD Lecturer at the Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam. From 2015-2020 he was the DAAD Visiting Professor at the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University. He received his PhD from the University of Tübingen. He taught at the Universities of Tübingen and Hannover and was twice a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. His latest book, Knowledge Regulation and National Security in Postwar America, co-authored with John Krige, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2022.