Chip War

The new Cold War » China's Big Fund | The CHIPS Act | America's fab renaissanceRoots of the conflict | The impact in 2023 | The impact in 2022

Semiconductors power everything from PCs and data centers to cars, lightbulbs, and refrigerators. Control over their manufacture means control over billions of dollars and the world economy -- and the US, China, Taiwan, and others are waging a geopolitical battle for exactly that. Welcome to the chip war.


China and the US chess board

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Major moments

May 8, 2024: The U.S. government has withdrawn select export licenses from Intel and Qualcomm, effectively preventing them from supplying processors to Huawei.

Mar. 9, 2024:  China is assembling the third phase of its Big Fund investment in semiconductor projects, a $27 billion investment to counter U.S. sanctions.

Jan. 27, 2024:  The Department of Commerce (DOC) introduced a proposal to prevent foreign entities, particularly from China, from using U.S. cloud computing for AI model training, a new level to the conflict.

Nov. 02, 2023:  The Nvidia RTX 4090 -- The fastest gaming GPU -- will no longer be available for export to China starting Nov. 17.

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