Chip War : Book Review

Book Review #20

Silicon Chips today help run everything from cars and toys to phones and nuclear missiles. Last week, I finished reading "Chip War" by Prof. Chris Miller, where he outlines the evolution and the major geopolitical implications of the Chip industry in today's day and age. Here is a summary of this interesting story in my words

- Vacuum tubes with a positive (Anode) and negative (Cathode) electrode when combined with control electrode served as the first controlled amplifiers (transistors) of electrical signals. In 1947, William Shockley, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen created the world’s first transistor made out of semiconductor materials beginning the end for vacuum tubes

- In 1955, eight engineers working under Shockley, including Bob Noyce (who invented the Integrated Circuit) and Gordon Moore left to start Fairchild Semiconductor tracing the early beginnings of Silicon Valley. Moore predicted that the number of transistors crammed on a silicon chip would double every two years and this has held true since the 1960s. Noyce and Moore later founded Intel together

- Failure to land missiles on target cost the US dearly in the Vietnam war but microchips help solve this and powered a decisive victory for the US in the 1991 Gulf war. While Nikita Khrushchev's USSR slipped in chip technoligy, Mao Zedong's cultural revolution pushed the Chinese also behind through the 70s

- Trying to beat high quality/low cost chips by Japanese companies, the US brought chip manufacturing to Korea, Taiwan and Singapore and over time the industry has concentrated and today a tiny number of companies control chip production

- Morris Chang, overlooked by Texas Instruments for CEO, started Taiwan Semiconductor Company (TSMC) with government support and TSMC today carves microscopic mazes of tiny transistors smaller than half the size of a coronavirus. Today, western companies focus only on chip design leaving the fabrication to TSMC, Samsung, GlobalFoundries and few other companies

- China, as a late entrant, decided to invest in chip companies with government support first through SMIC in the year 2000 and soon after with Huawei. While Huawei had some initial benefits from intellectual property theft, much of their success was driven by efficient manufacturing and world-leading R&D. Huawei's ascendence and the fear of spying tools led to Australia, UK and US invoke a series of restrictions that weakened Huawei and made them divest part of their smartphone business and delay 5G rollouts

- China's array of warfare capabilities including long-range & anti-ship missiles and anti-satellite systems make them a powerful opponent of the US. While the optimists hope that there will be no attempt From China to invade Taiwan, the concentration of the chip industry in Taiwan (37% of the world's logic chips) puts the world at a huge economic risk should there be a conflict

Overall, a thrilling book and a must read!

#semiconductors #geopolitics #bookreview

Metabolical : Book Review

Book Review #19

Just finished "Metabolical" by Dr. Robert Lustig, a must-read for anyone who cares about healthy living. Metabolical = Metabolic + Diabolical - you get the drift. Here is an attempt to summarize the insights and action points from this super book.

- The book's core advice can be summarized in six words: a) protect the liver, b) feed the gut. Our livers are stuffed, and our intestines are starved—because of processed food.

- Pesticides are just 10% of our problem. 90% is due to processed food and is the primary cause for diabetes, fatty liver disease, heart disease, and tooth decay; correlative for cancer, dementia, hypertension, and depression; and plausible for autoimmune disease and anxiety

- Don't go by nutrition labels; it is not what’s in the food—it’s what’s been done to the food that matters

- Refined carbohydrate and dietary sugars are the biggest cause of type 2 diabetes. Mitochondria in your cells divert excess glucose (from carbs/sugar) into fat. When this happens in the liver, you get fatty liver, leading to insulin resistance

- Avoid food that has Fructose or High Fructose Corn Syrup. Fructose makes twice as much liver fat vs. glucose and generates 100 times more oxygen radicals causing cell dysfunction and structural damage to lipids, proteins and DNA

- Fiber is the single most important nutrient for health, as it protects the liver and feeds the gut. You don’t absorb fiber but it is for your the 100 trillion gut bacteria in your intestine

- Vegan diets and Keto diets are both extreme diets and either can cause problems. Big Food industry benefits from either and peddles both processed carbs and processed meat.

- Of all antibiotics sold in 2014, only 20 percent were for human use, 80 percent were used on livestock and poultry; these antibiotics survive slaughter and processing, and reach our intestines

- Seed oils are high in omega-6 fatty acids, that are highly inflammatory; Omega-3s, found in fish, nuts and seeds, are anti-inflammatory

- You can grow green vegetables almost anywhere—and it’s Real Food. And you can turn dirt back into soil. It’s called regenerative farming. You just need a cow :)

- Genetics explains only 15% of chronic disease, 85 percent is environmental

- Avoid and detest packaged food and instead eat real whole food; Robert's cookbooks are available free at www.eatreal.org

- It is a long and arduous fight against Big Food. Example, the dangers of trans-fats were first known in 1957 and Fred Kummerow fought till 2013 (he was 99 by then) when FDA finally acknowledged that trans fats weren't safe

- One way or another, you’re going to pay. You can either pay the farmer or the doctor—which would you prefer? Make a conscious choice

Eat Real and stay healthy.

#bookreview #food #healthylife Robert Lustig