US-China chip war: America is winning

For more than a century the scramble for oil unleashed wars, forced unusual alliances and sparked diplomatic rows. Now the world's two biggest economies are battling over another precious resource: semiconductors, the chips that literally power our daily life. These tiny fragments of silicon are at the heart of a $500bn industry that is expected to double by 2030. And whoever controls the supply chains - a tangled network of companies and countries that make the chips - holds the key to being an unrivalled superpower.

China wants the technology to produce chips. That's why the US, a source of much of the tech, is cutting Beijing off. The two countries are clearly engaged in an arms race in the Asia Pacific, says Chris Miller, author of Chip Wars and associate professor at Tufts University. But, he adds, there's more to the race: "[It] takes place both in traditional spheres, like numbers of ships, or missiles produced but increasingly, it's taking place in terms of the quality of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms that can be employed in military systems."

For now, the US is winning - but the chip war it has declared on China is reshaping the global economy.

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