In the twenty-first-century economy and security landscape, semiconductors have become one of the most critical foundations of power. These technologies underpin nearly every advanced capability, from artificial intelligence and defense systems to smart vehicles, next-generation communications, and digital infrastructure. The Semiconductors and Technology Supply Chains Program examines the strategic role of chips as one of the most important geopolitical and economic chokepoints of the contemporary world.
This research area focuses on a fundamental question: how has a small but indispensable technology become a central arena of competition among major powers? The extraordinary complexity of global semiconductor supply chains—from chip design and manufacturing equipment to raw materials, fabrication, packaging, and distribution—has transformed control over key nodes of these networks into a strategic advantage for states.
The program analyzes the geopolitical and geo-economic dynamics surrounding the semiconductor industry, including industrial policies, state-led investments in domestic manufacturing capacity, export controls, restrictions on sensitive technologies, and efforts by governments to reduce vulnerabilities caused by technological dependencies.
A central focus of this program is the concept of technology supply chain security—an issue that has become a major policy priority following global supply chain disruptions and the intensification of technological competition between the United States and China. Within this framework, reliable access to critical technologies is no longer viewed solely as an economic concern but as a matter of national security and strategic resilience.
At CTST, semiconductors are not examined merely as an advanced industrial sector; they are analyzed as one of the defining arenas of global technopolitics, where innovation, trade, security, and geopolitical power converge.