Account of the worldwide chip battle wins FT e-book prize

Chris Miller has gained the Monetary Occasions Enterprise Guide of the 12 months Award for Chip Conflict, his well timed and vital account of the worldwide battle for semiconductor supremacy, in one of many tightest contests because the prize began in 2005.

Miller obtained the £30,000 prize, introduced to the yr’s “most compelling and fulfilling” enterprise e-book, at a ceremony in London on December 5.

The judges’ dialogue of the shortlist of six titles ended with a close-fought battle between Chip Conflict and The Energy Legislation, a historical past of the enterprise capital trade by Sebastian Mallaby, a earlier winner of the prize.

Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT and chair of the e-book award judging panel, described Chip Conflict as one of the vital books she had learn this yr. “The combat for semiconductors and the hunt for provide chain resilience are among the many greatest financial and enterprise tales of our time and will probably be for a lot of the close to future,” she stated.

Miller, affiliate professor of worldwide historical past at Tufts College’s Fletcher Faculty of Legislation and Diplomacy, explains within the e-book how producers got here to rely on provide of superior chips from a number of corporations, together with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Firm, primarily based within the geopolitical hotspot off mainland China.

Current international tensions and provide chain difficulties, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, had solely underlined that dependency and the timeliness of Miller’s evaluation, the award judges stated.

On the identical award ceremony, Âriel de Fauconberg obtained the £15,000 Bracken Bower Prize for her e-book proposal, Earlier than the Daybreak, concerning the pioneering work of local weather know-how entrepreneurs. Minouche Shafik, director of the London Faculty of Economics, was the visitor speaker.

The authors of 5 different titles shortlisted for the primary award obtained £10,000. The opposite finalists have been: Useless within the Water, by Matthew Campbell and Package Chellel, concerning the ramifications of an obvious assault on an oil tanker; Affect Empire, Lulu Chen’s e-book about Tencent, the Chinese language know-how firm; The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, by Gary Gerstle, on the implications of untrammelled free markets; Mallaby’s The Energy Legislation; and Dysfunction, Helen Thompson’s evaluation of power geopolitics.

Nicole Perlroth’s investigation into the cyber weapons arms race, This Is How They Inform Me the World Ends, was final yr’s winner of the enterprise e-book award.

The opposite judges of the 2022 award have been: Mimi Alemayehou, senior vice-president for public-private partnerships at Mastercard’s humanitarian and growth group; Mitchell Baker, chief government, Mozilla Company; Mohamed El-Erian, president, Queens’ School, Cambridge, and adviser to Allianz and Gramercy; James Kondo, chair, Worldwide Home of Japan; Randall Kroszner, professor of economics and deputy dean for government programmes at College of Chicago’s Sales space Faculty of Enterprise; and Shriti Vadera, chair, Prudential and the Royal Shakespeare Firm.

Study extra concerning the award right here.