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b'\\u201cWe rarely think about chips, yet they\\u2019ve created the modern world,\\u201d writes the historian Chris Miller.\\n\\nHe\\u2019s not exaggerating. Semiconductors power everything from our phones and computers to cars, planes, advanced military equipment, and A.I. systems. Chips are the foundation of modern economic prosperity, military strength and geopolitical power.\\n\\nThis conversation with Chris Miller, author of \\u201cChip War: The Fight for the World\\u2019s Most Critical Technology,\\u201d was recorded back in April. But we wanted to re-air it, because what Miller lays out in that book, and in this conversation, is essential to understanding where we are in 2023, and the faultlines that will shape the world ahead. \\n\\nBecause semiconductors have\\xa0 one of the most concentrated supply chains of any technology today. One Taiwanese company, TSMC, produces around 90 percent of the most advanced chips. A single Dutch firm, ASML, produces all of the world\\u2019s EUV lithography machines, which are essential to produce leading-edge chips. The entire industry is built like this.\\n\\nThat doesn\\u2019t just make the chip supply chain vulnerable to external shocks; it also makes it easily weaponizable by the powers that control it. In 2022, the Biden administration banned exports of advanced chips \\u2014 and the equipment needed to produce those chips \\u2014 to China, and then further tightened those rules this October. In August 2022, President Biden signed into law the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which includes a $52 billion investment to on-shore U.S. chip manufacturing. China has invested tens of billions of dollars over the past decade to build a domestic semiconductor industry of its own. Chips have become to the geopolitics of the 21st century what oil was to the geopolitics of the 20th.\\n\\nIn this conversation, Miller talks me through what semiconductors are, why they matter and how they are shaping everything from U.S.-China relations and the Russia-Ukraine war to the Biden policy agenda and the future of A.I.\\n\\nMentioned:\\n\\n\\u201cThe Problem With Everything-Bagel Liberalism\\u201d\\xa0by Ezra Klein\\n\\nBook Recommendations:The World For Sale\\xa0by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy\\n\\nNexus by Jonathan Reed Winkler\\n\\nPrestige, Manipulation and Coercion by Joseph Torigian\\n\\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\\n\\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\\n\\n\\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d is produced by Annie Galvin, Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Rog\\xe9 Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.'