Microchips, also commonly known as integrated circuits(ICs), are an advancement responsible for almost all modern technology. They have effectively ushered in the information age and the 21st century as we know it. As a result, when the global production and flow of microchips were hampered during and after the worst of the pandemic, countries all over the world took notice.
Like the production of most goods today, microchips are primarily produced in Asia, with Taiwan and China being the biggest manufacturers of microchips in the world. This meant that during the pandemic, when China and its surroundings were disproportionately affected (due to obvious reasons), the hundreds of global supply chains built based on microchips faltered, leading to large-scale shortages in everything from graphics cards to cars.
While many countries already saw this as a crisis, the perception of this issue was further punctuated by China’s response to the Russia-Ukrainian conflict, especially in western countries. This was because when China didn’t speak out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a lot of the western world thought that the Chinese Communist Party would see this as a go-ahead to invade Taiwan. These worries didn’t stop there, as Nancy Pelosi, a prominent Democrat, even visited Taiwan, one of the first visits to Taiwan by a powerful US politician ever. The United States Government went ahead and recently introduced a new piece of legislation aimed at promoting chip manufacturing within their borders, addressing this very issue. The US has also recently halted the sales of microchips by US-based companies like Nvidia and Qualcomm to Honor, a Chinese company.
In the end, due to the importance of microchips, they are undeniably going to be an essential part of geopolitics and will continue to become even more contentious as they become larger and larger parts of daily life.
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