SEMICONDUCTORS ARE the cornerstone of the modern economy. Everything from emails to guided missiles relies on them. Yet parts of the supply chain, particularly for cutting-edge chips, depend on choke-points dominated by a small number of firms. For decades few people worried much about this—until covid-19 and rising tensions between China and America highlighted the sector’s fragility. In “Chip War”, his elegant new book, Chris Miller of Tufts University shows how economic, geopolitical and technological forces shaped this essential industry.

半导体是现代经济的基石。从电子邮件到制导导弹，一切都离不开半导体。然而半导体供应链的某些组成部分，尤其是涉及尖端芯片的那些，取决于由少数公司控制的关键节点。几十年来，很少有人对此感到担忧一直到新冠肺炎和中美之间日益紧张的关系令该行业的脆弱性显露无疑。塔夫茨大学（Tufts University）的克里斯·米勒（Chris Miller）在他文风简洁优雅的新著《芯片战争》（Chip War）中，向读者展示了经济、地缘政治以及技术等方面的力量是如何塑造这一重要产业的。

In 1947 a group of researchers at Bell Labs, a subsidiary of AT&T,a telecoms giant, invented the transistor, a switch that controls electric current and is a building block of modern electronics. Within a decade researchers were placing several transistors on a slab of silicon to make an “integrated circuit”, or chip. A thriving industry grew up around California, outsourcing low-value tasks, such as assembly, to Asia where labour was cheaper.

1947年，电信巨头AT＆T的子公司贝尔实验室（Bell Labs）的一群研究人员发明了晶体管，这是一种控制电流的开关，也是现代电子设备的基本构件。不出十年，研究人员将几个晶体管放在一块硅片上，制成了“集成电路”，也就是芯片。一个欣欣向荣的产业在加州各地逐渐发展起来，组装等低价值工作则外包给了劳动力成本较低的亚洲。