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

by Chris Miller

Gorbachev promised to end the Cold War by withdrawing Soviet troops from Eastern Europe, and he wanted access to American technologies in exchange. Meeting with America’s tech executives, he encouraged them to invest in the USSR. When Gorbachev visited Stanford University, he high-fived spectators as he walked around campus. “The Cold War is now behind us,” the Soviet leader told an audience at Stanford. “Let’s not wrangle over who won it.” But it was obvious who won, and why. Ogarkov had identified the dynamic a decade earlier, though at the time he hoped the USSR might overcome it. Like the rest of the Soviet military leadership, he’d grown more pessimistic over time. As early as 1983, Ogarkov had gone so far as to tell American journalist Les Gelb—off the record—that “the Cold War is over and you have won.” The Soviet Union’s rockets were as powerful as ever. It had the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. But its semiconductor production couldn’t keep up, its computer industry fell behind, its communications and surveillance technologies lagged, and the military consequences were disastrous. “All modern military capability is based on economic innovation, technology, and economic strength,” Ogarkov explained to Gelb. “Military technology is based on computers. You are far, far ahead of us with computers…. In your country, every little child has a computer from age 5.”