Review — Chip War

‘Chip War’ by Chris Miller won the prestigious Financial Times Business Book of the year in 2022. When a book wins that award, I try to read it sooner rather than later. Boy I gotta tell that I thought this book lacked a whole lot. Miller’s book reads like a textbook. It’s a history lesson vs any kind of narrative which I found disappointing. I can only imagine what Michael Lewis would do with this topic if he were interested.

Miller essentially starts at the beginning and besides coming back to the late Intel CEO Andy Grove every now and then (and rightfully so in my opinion) Miller just writes a couple of pages on this topic or that period of time and then moves on. He does a poor job of intertwining everything, instead he just lets the timeline tell the story.

Granted there is a lot of information to cover when it comes to computer chips and there is certainly a long history to cover. That being said, Miller could have done a better job of telling that story through the eyes of say Grove or Morris Chang who founded Taiwan Semiconductor. While he comes back to these two a lot, it feels like he glanced over them too quickly to get to other people and places.

Look there is a lot of good info in here and it certainly leaves the reader with a better information about the chip industry than they had when they first started. Book of the year? Eh, I feel like there are better ones out there that I haven’t read yet.