Chip War: The Fight For The World's Most Critical Technology Quotes
"Japanese soldiers described World War II as a 'typhoon of steel.'"
"The great powers had manufactured planes and tanks by the thousands, but they’d also built research labs that developed new devices like rockets and radars."
"The ancient Babylonians invented the abacus to manipulate large numbers."
"Organized groups of human calculators showed the promise of computation, but also the limits of using brains to compute."
"Even before World War II, money was flowing into projects to produce more capable mechanical computers."
"William Shockley had long assumed that if a better 'switch' was to be found, it would be with the help of a type of material called semiconductors."
"Shockley's theories about semiconductor materials had been proven correct."
"The United States wanted it that way: an industrial war was a struggle America would win."
"Akio Morita, however, was in his early twenties and had spent the final months of the war developing heat-seeking missiles."
"By 1964, Noyce bragged, the integrated circuits in Apollo computers had run for 19 million hours with only two failures."
"Our plan is to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kind of products they want. The public does not know what is possible, but we do."
"It was a victory for Japanese leaders like Prime Minister Ikeda, too. His goal of doubling Japanese incomes was achieved two years ahead of schedule."
"Morris Chang and Andy Grove were schoolboys in 1945, too young to have thought seriously about technology or politics."
"Fairchild, however, was still owned by an East Coast multimillionaire who paid his employees well but refused to give them stock options, viewing the idea of giving away equity as a form of 'creeping socialism.'"
"The entire Soviet semiconductor sector functioned like a defense contractor—secretive, top-down, oriented toward military systems, fulfilling orders with little scope for creativity."
"Foreign policy strategists perceived ethnic Chinese communities all over the region as ripe for Communist penetration, ready to fall to Communist influence like a cascade of dominoes."
"Facing a nuclear China, Taiwan needed American security guarantees more than ever."
"Semiconductors were at the center of [Taiwan's] plan. Li knew there were plenty of Taiwanese-American semiconductor engineers willing to help."
"In Dallas, Morris Chang urged his colleagues at TI to set up a facility in Taiwan."
"Electronics assembly, meanwhile, would catalyze other investments, helping Taiwan produce more higher-value goods."
"From South Korea to Taiwan, Singapore to the Philippines a map of semiconductor assembly facilities looked much like a map of American military bases across Asia."
"In 1977, Mark Shepherd returned to Taiwan and met again with K. T. Li, nearly a decade after their first meeting."
"Intel’s founders leave Fairchild; Form Own Electronics Firm."
"Semiconductors are the key to leadership in electronics."
"If Japanese semiconductors are not used, [American military] accuracy cannot be assured."
"The U.S. spent five to ten times more on defense relative to the size of its economy. Japan focused on growing its economy, while America shouldered the burden of defending it."
"Everything from satellites to early warning radars to self-guided missiles depended on advanced chips."
"Without semiconductors you’re in nowheresville."
"Japan has nearly a 100 percent share of these 1-megabit semiconductors."
"The entire world was more tightly connected to America’s innovation infrastructure, and even adversaries like the USSR spent their time copying U.S. chips and chipmaking tools."
"Micron learned to compete with Japanese rivals like Toshiba and Fujitsu."
"Fear of competition, fear of bankruptcy, fear of being wrong and fear of losing can all be powerful motivators."
"All modern military capability is based on economic innovation, technology, and economic strength."
"The semiconductor is at the heart of the modern world."
"The laws of physics are not just guidelines."
"If you start worrying about overinvestment, you can’t sleep at night."
"Every little child has a computer from age 5."
"Technology drives change, but it is people who make it happen."
"There is no Plan B." - Tony Yen on the development of extreme-ultraviolet lithography.
"The only thing I can think of is software is something that is changing too rapidly, or you don’t exactly know what you want yet, or you didn’t have time to get it into hardware." - Steve Jobs on the nature of software.
"Yeah, Andy, that’s called research." - Carruthers's response to skepticism about investing in unproven technology.
"Real men have fabs." - Jerry Sanders on the importance of manufacturing in the semiconductor industry.
"To have too much capacity than the other way around." - Morris Chang on the strategy of overcapacity in chip manufacturing.
"We’re just at the start." - Morris Chang on the future of semiconductor technology.
"If you don’t behave, we’re going to buy you." - ASML CEO's approach to managing suppliers.
"Abandoning today’s ‘commodity’ manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry." - Andy Grove on the risks of offshoring manufacturing.
"The combined R&D spending of TSMC and its ten biggest customers exceeds that of Samsung and Intel together." - Morris Chang on the power of collaboration in R&D.
"Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China." - Common text on Apple products, underscoring the global nature of manufacturing and design.
"The cloud may sound ethereal, but the silicon on which all our data lives is very real—and very expensive."
"Whether it will be Nvidia or the big cloud companies doing the vanquishing, Intel’s near-monopoly in sales of processors for data centers is ending."
"Brian Krzanich, who was Intel’s CEO from 2013 to 2018, insisted publicly that 'I’ve been basically running our foundry business for the last few years.'"
"As Intel approached its fiftieth anniversary in 2018, decay had set in. The company’s market share was shrinking."
"Without cybersecurity there is no national security."
"Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, in 2014, 'and without informatization, there is no modernization.'"
"No country has been more successful than China at harnessing the digital world for authoritarian purposes."
"Xi thought this presented an untenable risk. 'However great its size, however high its market capitalization, if an internet enterprise critically relies on the outside world for core components, the ‘vital gate’ of the supply chain is grasped in the hands of others,' Xi declared in 2016."
"Huawei’s rise has, however, worked in the interests of the Chinese state, as the company grabbed market share and embedded its equipment in the world’s telecom networks."
"The future of war will be defined by computing power. The U.S. military is no longer the unchallenged leader."
"Globalization of chip fabrication hadn’t occurred; 'Taiwanization' had."
"A laissez-faire system works if every country agrees to it."
"The chip industry itself—deeply fearful of angering China or TSMC—put its considerable lobbying resources behind repeating false platitudes."
"The national security bureaucracy was coming to adopt a different view... paid to be paranoid."
"U.S. intelligence had voiced concerns about Huawei’s alleged links to the Chinese government."
"The entire chip industry depended on sales to China—our number one customer is our number one competitor."
"America’s semiconductor industry needed to be saved from itself."
"Making profits and going public… are not the priority at YMTC. Instead, the company’s focused on building the country’s own chips."
"For too long as a nation, we haven’t been making the big, bold investments we need to outpace our global competitors."
"Taiwan’s chip industry is a 'silicon shield' that allows Taiwan to protect itself and others."