2022, the year that technology got geopolitical

What a year it’s been. The coronavirus was beaten into submission, although the economic after-effects such as supply chain disruptions and inflation persist. Russia launched a brutal but embarrassingly ineffective invasion of Ukraine, plummeting Europe into an energy crisis and rattling the EU’s decade-long Wandel durch Handel tenet. And we’ve been watching World Cup games while a Christmas tree lights up the room.

2022 was also the year that semiconductor technology irrevocably got geopolitical. A chip war between the US and China had been brewing for several years, but after the sweeping export restrictions issued by the US, trade relations won’t return to normal anytime soon. “The post-Cold War world has come to an end, and there’s an intense competition underway to shape what comes next. And at the heart of that competition is technology,” US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, barely stopping short of announcing a new Cold War with China. TSMC founder Morris Chang said that “globalization and free trade are almost dead,” and unlikely to return.