More than a trillion chips are made every year, roughly 150 for every person on earth. They power our phones, our cars, our missiles, and the artificial intelligence revolution. And more than 90% of the most advanced ones come from a single company in Taiwan, built with machines that only one company in the world can make. Rakesh Kumar, professor of computer engineering at the University of Illinois and author of The Chip Age: How Semiconductors Became the World’s Most Powerful Resource, joins Newt to explain how a sliver of silicon became the world’s most consequential resource. Drawing on six decades of innovation, espionage, and geopolitical rivalry, Kumar breaks down how the chip industry works, how fragile its supply chain really is, and what the race for chip sovereignty means for America’s competition with China.
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