The rebirth of America’s chip industry after Japan’s DRAM onslaught was only possible thanks to Andy Grove’s paranoia, Jerry Sanders’s bare-knuckle brawling, and Jack Simplot’s cowboy competitiveness. Silicon Valley’s testosterone and stock option−fueled competition often felt less like the sterile economics described in textbooks and more like a Darwinian struggle for the survival of the fittest. Many firms failed, fortunes were lost, and tens of thousands of employees were laid off. The companies like Intel and Micron that survived did so less thanks to their engineering skills—though these
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