Name: Why China is losing the microchip war
Uploaded: 2023-02-17T04:42:16.000Z
Duration: 9 min 59 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

left his job as an engineer at a company called ASML...

the only company in the world that can make this machine.

This machine makes the most  advanced semiconductor chips

US and ASML lawyers  would later allege that

Yu recruited other ASML engineers  to his US company...

stolen information about AMSL's machine...

and that it was all backed by the Chinese government.

This story is just one small piece of China's

monumental effort to transform one of the world's most global

and significant industries:  semiconductors.

But China's effort has increasingly locked it

enter into a Cold War over computer chips?

invented in the 1950s by engineers in the US.

It's a piece of silicon with four transistors on it.

The more transistors, the more powerful the chip.

engineers had already made one  with four times the transistors...

and each year they figured out ways to add more.

This is Chris Miller,  author of Chip War.

predicted in 1965 that the computing power

produced by a single chip would double every year or so

and that rate has held true roughly up to the present.

The first companies dedicated  to making chips were in the US

where they really just had one main customer:

The first use cases were actually in guidance computers

Since chip companies were making  better and better chips each year

the US government believed  a deep partnership with them

would ensure that it always had access  to the most advanced ones.

The US government has believed that computing has been a core

determinant of nations' power on the world stage.

has been used to crack codes in World War II

or to track Soviet submarines during the Cold War.

At first, these chip companies handled  the entire supply chain.

They designed the chips, manufactured them, and assembled them

into a package for installation into a product.

They just had to make  a lot more of them

So many chip companies moved  their manufacturing and assembly

to factories in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong

All these countries were US allies or partners

and this was a way to support their economies and deepen ties.

At the same time, it banned these chip companies

It was a way to keep them years behind  the US as chips advanced.

Because of Moore's Law,  advanced chips are

substantially better than previous generations.

If you're 5 years behind or 10 years behind

you're actually quite far behind the cutting edge.

But it wasn't long before these allied governments

began investing in their own chip companies.

Toshiba in Japan and Samsung  in South Korea

that many companies in the US  stopped doing it.

It meant that U.S. companies were not the only ones

who could make the most advanced chips anymore.

was increasingly reliant on other countries for the materials,

software, and equipment needed to make more complex chips.

But while the US and its allies  were pushing the limits

In addition to the US blocking it  from accessing chips

many of China's brightest  scientists and engineers

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Why China is losing the microchip war

entire

significant

effort

realize