Chris Miller

Chris Miller is an American historian whose Chip War chronicles the geopolitical struggle for dominance in the global semiconductor industry with impressive clarity and depth.

Chris Miller is an associate professor of international history at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, and Chip War, published in 2022, draws on his academic expertise to tell the history of the semiconductor industry as a story of geopolitical competition, technological ingenuity, and strategic dependency. The book traces the arc from the invention of the transistor to the present-day race between the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and China to control the supply of advanced chips — the foundation on which modern economies and militaries run.

Miller is an adept narrative historian. He moves between corporate biographies, Cold War strategy, and manufacturing logistics with evident command of the material, and he finds the human stories that make a deeply technical subject readable. Chip War explains, accessibly and without dumbing down, why semiconductor supply chains are among the most consequential political vulnerabilities in the world. The book was published just as chip shortages were disrupting the global economy and before the U.S. CHIPS Act became law, and it reads as essential context for both.

Some specialist readers have noted that the book’s geopolitical framing occasionally oversimplifies the economics, and that the final chapters projecting future developments are necessarily speculative. But as an introduction to a subject that shapes almost every dimension of contemporary life, Chip War is exceptionally well done — rigorous, readable, and genuinely important.