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

by Chris Miller

in spring 2016, Tsinghua quietly bought 6 percent of the shares in Lattice Semiconductor, another U.S. chip firm. “This is purely a financial investment,” Zhao told the Wall Street Journal. “We don’t have any intention at all to try to acquire Lattice.” Scarcely weeks after the investment was publicized, Tsinghua Unigroup began to sell its shares in Lattice. Shortly thereafter, Lattice received a buyout offer from a California-based investment firm called Canyon Bridge, which journalists from Reuters revealed had been discreetly funded by the Chinese government. The U.S. government firmly rejected the deal. The same investment fund simultaneously bought Imagination, a UK-based chip designer in financial distress. The transaction was carefully structured to exclude Imagination’s U.S. assets so that Washington didn’t block it, too. British regulators waved the deal through, only to find themselves regretting the decision when, three years later, the new owners tried to restructure the board of directors with officials appointed by a Chinese government investment fund.