The Machine and the Microchip: Inside the Secret War for Global High-Tech Supremacy

The story of the world’s most important machine and the global chip war to control the future of AI.

On the island of Taiwan a company called TSMC produces 90 percent of the advanced microchips that power Elon Musk’s electric cars and space rockets, Apple’s iPhones and computers, ChatGPT’s AI systems, and NVIDIA’s stock price. TSMC can do so only with the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography system manufactured by a Dutch company, ASML. How a little-known Dutch company and a vulnerable island in East Asia became central to the global balance of power is the story Cagan Koc and Diederik Baazil tell in The Machine and the Microchip. It is a thrilling narrative that takes readers from the White House Situation Room and government offices in Europe and Asia to the multi-billion-dollar cleanrooms where the world's most advanced technology is created—to explain why the struggle for control of advanced semiconductors may well determine the course of this century.

Drawing on original reporting, exclusive interviews, and previously undisclosed details, Koc and Baazil examine the technological breakthroughs, export controls, corporate rivalries, political decisions, and espionage campaigns that have transformed semiconductors into the strategic geopolitical battleground of the twenty-first century. Their book also connects the AI revolution to the semiconductor supply chain, revealing the hidden technologies, companies, and people that make AI possible. At once accessible and deeply informed, spanning the worlds of engineering, business, national security, and international politics, their work tells what could be the defining story of our time.