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In August 2022, Nancy Pelosi, then the third highest-ranking official in the U.S. power hierarchy, visited Taiwan. Pelosi was the highest-ranking American official to visit Taiwan in the past 25 years. China, which considers Taiwan its own territory, could not accept a high-ranking U.S. official entering Taiwan. China conducted military exercises encircling Taiwan as a show of force, escalating tensions between the two sides and between the U.S. and China to a peak.

The author of Arm, The Everything Blueprint begins by mentioning this incident. He recalls the reason for the U.S.-China standoff at the time, highlighting semiconductors and reminding readers that Taiwan is home to TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor foundry (contract semiconductor manufacturer).

The U.S. and China compete in various fields such as economy, science, military, and space development, and securing semiconductors is a top priority. Therefore, TSMC is a crucial company for both the U.S. and China. The fact that Mark Liu, chairman of TSMC, and founder Morris Chang joined Pelosi and then Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen for lunch underscores this importance. China must have felt deeply displeased.

The microchip mentioned in the title refers to semiconductors in general and specifically to system semiconductors such as processors. The author argues that semiconductors have become the ultimate goal of today's geopolitical conflicts and that a new Cold War is forming around microchip supply disputes. This is the very reason for writing the book.

As the author claims, semiconductors are used in a wide variety of applications today. Not only smartphones, which come to mind first, but also home appliances, medical devices, and military weapons all contain semiconductors. Even during the supply shortage in 2021, 10.115 billion chips were manufactured and sold. This means an additional 125 chips per person worldwide. Citing a semiconductor industry analyst, the author predicts that if Taiwan were invaded by China and semiconductor supply were interrupted, the shock to the global economy would be greater than the 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy or the 2020 COVID-19 crisis.

Arm, The Everything Blueprint explores how Arm, the most important semiconductor design company in the smartphone era, achieved its current status through its history.

Arm’s predecessor, Acorn, laid its foundation by supplying BBC Microcomputer products for the BBC’s computer education program. Arm was established in 1990. Its beginnings were humble. Steve Furber, a key developer of the BBC Micro, thought Arm lagged behind competitors and left to become a computer engineering professor at the University of Manchester. In early 1991, Arm opened an office in the quiet village of Swafham Bulbeck, Cambridgeshire, England, in a building called Harvis Barn, which had been used as a horse stable until the late 1980s. However, Nokia, which led the early mobile phone market, adopted Arm’s technology, and with the launch of Apple’s iPhone in 2007, the smartphone era arrived, making Arm the absolute leader in the mobile phone AP market, with a market share reaching 90%.

The book extensively covers the long-standing relationship between ARM and Apple. The partnership with Apple greatly helped ARM establish its foundation and achieve commercial success. Ultimately, ARM was acquired by SoftBank in 2016. Although there were criticisms that SoftBank’s chairman Masayoshi Son invested too heavily in ARM, Son made a huge return when ARM went public on NASDAQ last September. Conversely, ARM contributed to Apple’s transformation from a computer company to a smartphone company and then to a technology leader.

The failed attempt by NVIDIA to acquire ARM in 2020 is a clear example of ARM’s stature. At the time, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Qualcomm, and others strongly opposed NVIDIA’s bid, fearing it could restrict access to ARM’s core designs, ultimately thwarting NVIDIA’s ambitions.

While the book mainly focuses on ARM, it also provides a broad overview of the semiconductor industry’s history since the 1950s.

Before discussing Acorn, the author covers the stories of Texas Instruments (TI) and Fairchild Semiconductor in the 1950s. TI developed the world’s first integrated circuit (IC), but the company that commercialized it was Fairchild Semiconductor, founded in 1957. ICs achieved commercial success when they were first mass-applied in the U.S. second-generation missile “Minuteman,” which began production in 1996.

Fairchild Semiconductor’s co-founders, Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, had opposite personalities. Noyce, four years younger than Kilby, was an outgoing and charismatic leader who became dissatisfied with Fairchild’s insufficient investment in research and development and eventually left the company. He resigned, vowing to develop products or technologies no one else was making, and founded Intel in 1968.

The book continues with fascinating semiconductor-related history. The author’s long experience writing for diverse media outlets such as The Independent, The Sunday Times, Daily Mail, and The Telegraph is evident in the wealth of interviews and materials gathered. However, some content is overly miscellaneous, which, while interesting, can hinder understanding the overall context.