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The Promise and Peril of Computer Chips with Tufts Professor Chris Miller

In this episode

Chris Miller, Tufts Professor and author,  explains how semiconductors—those tiny chips inside your phone, car, and coffee maker—have become the most critical technology in the world. Today’s global economy, military power, and AI breakthroughs all hinge on who makes the chips and where.

In this episode, Dr. Miller explores how the chip industry evolved from independent manufacturing giants to specialized global supply chains and why that’s both a strength and a vulnerability. He breaks down the growing competition between the U.S. and China, the geopolitical risk of relying on Taiwan, and why the future of AI depends not just on better software but on smarter, faster hardware.

💡 Topics Covered:

  • Why semiconductors are the backbone of modern technology
  • The shift from integrated chip companies to design vs. manufacturing specialization
  • How legacy companies like Intel lost ground and what it means for the U.S.
  • The U.S./China tech rivalry and supply chain vulnerabilities
  • AI’s explosive growth and the chip race driving it
  • The surprising role of immigration in America’s tech dominance
  • Why even automakers and retailers are becoming chip-aware

Learn more in Dr. Miller’s book, Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology: https://www.christophermiller.net/books

 

About the speakers

Chris Miller
Professor of International History

Chris Miller is Professor of International History, where his research focuses on technology, geopolitics, economics, international affairs, and Russia.

He is author of Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology, a geopolitical history of the computer chip.

He is the author of three other books on Russia, including Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia; We Shall Be Masters: Russia's Pivots to East Asia from Peter the Great to Putin; and The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR. He has previously served as the Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale, a lecturer at the New Economic School in Moscow, a visiting researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research associate at the Brookings Institution, and as a fellow at the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Academy. He received his PhD and MA from Yale University and his BA in history from Harvard University. For more information, see www.christophermiller.net.