machines, they will develop them themselves.” There were already hints that the Chinese were cracking the code. In the weeks just before the CHIPS Act passed, SMIC produced a seven-nanometer chip that was used in a Chinese system for mining cryptocurrency. It was a surprise: As recently as 2020, amid the pandemic, China had appeared stuck at forty nanometers. The CIA spent weeks examining the chip and concluded it was based on, or perhaps stolen from, TSMC’s own designs. A year later, in the late summer of 2023, Huawei brought out a new cellphone using a chip with the same circuit dimensions.
...more
