A Taiwan there is the biggest industrial system for manufacturing chips in the world. 60% of the global market and 90% of the most advanced microchips are produced on this island. Who owns them will have in hand the tools to dominate the planet, weapons, technology, Artificial Intelligence. It is for this reason that the strongest tensions in the commercial and industrial battle between Taiwan are concentrated United States e Chinese. Taiwan has become the next “front” in a major-power war.
The episode Of PresaDiretta “The War of the Chips”, in onda Monday 6 March at 21.20 on Rai3, is a journey between Taiwan, the United States and China to understand why microchips have become the battleground between Washington and Beijing. And what will be his political and strategic choices in Europe. Over the past 20 years, China has spent billions to create a domestic semiconductor industry free from US technologies. But at the moment China is only able to produce chips up to 14 nanometers, lagging Taiwan by about 7 years.
At the heart of the matter are dual-use semiconductors, i.e. chips for commercial purposes but which can also be used for the production of more advanced weapons. For example, for a guided missile. The quality of the semiconductors decides the weapon’s accuracy. Jets and missiles require increasingly advanced chips. In 2022, the US government released a report on supply chain and semiconductors, concluding that Taiwan has produced more than 92 percent of the globally advanced chips.
In the Silicon Valley PresaDiretta went to California to understand the reasons and consequences of the American introduction of the most severe protectionist measures ever applied to China precisely on the microchip front. And where at the same time, a massive investment program has been launched to help tech companies. Measures born to make the United States run faster than China. It’s the final battle for control of Artificial Intelligence.
The geopolitical challenge of the century is played out in this tiny object. Microchips are everywhere, which is why we can no longer do without them: mobile phones, tablets, computers, cars, consoles, televisions, washing machines, refrigerators, any recent electronic object works thanks to microchips. Very small but essential, they are integrated circuits that can contain up to billions of transistors the size of which is calculated in nanometers. Modern life as we know it today would not exist without microchips, and an eventual disruption of their supply would throw us back a century.
THE CHIP WAR is a reportage by Riccardo Iacona, with Marcello Brecciaroli, Pablo Castellani, Marianna De Marzi, Francesca Nava, Paola Vecchia, Fabio Colazzo, Matteo Delbò, Alessandro Marcelli.