Semiconductors

The U.S. and China Are Talking Again. What Actually Changed?

In September, presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met at the White House amid ceremonial pageantry and the familiar list of hard questions: tariffs, chips, rare-earth minerals, Taiwan and artificial intelligence. The clearest result was…

Why Japan Matters More Than Most People Realize

When people talk about a crisis around Taiwan, the focus tends to land on Taiwan itself, China, and Washington. But the map tells a wider story. Japan’s southwestern islands sit near Taiwan and the East China Sea; U.S. forces operate from b…

Why Taiwan Sits at the Center of the U.S.–China Relationship

A disruption in the Taiwan Strait would not stay in the Taiwan Strait. It could test the limits of U.S. policy, unsettle American allies, interrupt trade routes, and expose how much of the world’s advanced computing depends on production cl…

The Chip War Isn't Really About Chips

A chip smaller than a fingernail can hold up a car, a data center, or a weapons system. That sounds like a contradiction: how can something so tiny matter so much? Because the chip is only the visible end of a production system that spans d…

Why China Wants Control of More of the Technology Supply Chain

When China tightened controls on rare earth exports in April 2025, the consequences did not stay inside China. Automakers and other manufacturers abroad scrambled to secure magnets, and some production lines faced shortages. The episode exp…

What Happens If the World Splits Into Two Technology Systems?

A phone, car or AI service can look like one product. Underneath it may depend on chip designs from one country, manufacturing tools from another, fabrication concentrated in Taiwan, minerals processed elsewhere, and software distributed ar…