Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology

by Chris Miller

Yet The Japan That Can Say No was controversial not because of its opinions, but because of the facts. The U.S. had fallen decisively behind in memory chips. If this trend persisted, geopolitical shifts would inevitably follow. It didn’t take a far-right provocateur like Ishihara to recognize this; American leaders foresaw similar trends. The same year that Ishihara and Morita published The Japan That Can Say No, former defense secretary Harold Brown published an article that drew much the same conclusions. “High Tech Is Foreign Policy,” Brown titled the article. If America’s high-tech position was deteriorating, its foreign policy position was at risk, too.