I recently read ChipWar by Chris Miller — a riveting account of how the semiconductor became the world’s most important technology and, by extension, the nerve centre of 21st-century geopolitics. As I turned the pages, I couldn’t help but contrast its thesis with that of Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree that I read about two decades ago.
Reading the two side by side, one gets a sense of how the world has changed — and hasn’t. Friedman was writing at a time when the buzzword was “globalisation,” and there was a kind of religious conviction that the market, the internet, and capital flows would knit the world into a single prosperous village. That vision now feels quaint, almost naïve. Miller’s narrative, meanwhile, is one of choke points, technological bottlenecks, and the fragility of interdependence.
The two are
particularly interesting in understanding the happenings in the Middle East, I
think.
Friedman’s
“Lexus”, which name I recently learnt was an abbreviation for “luxury export to
the US”, was the symbol of progress:
high-tech, efficient, and global. His “Olive Tree” was the reminder that
identity, culture, and history still matter — and often collide with the Lexus
in unpredictable ways. In Gaza, in southern Lebanon, in the Red Sea, we are
witnessing just such a clash. The global supply chain hums along, until it hits
a blockade — metaphorical or literal — thrown up by actors who feel excluded or
endangered by the global system.
Friedman’s hope
was that the gravitational pull of the global economy would discipline states
and societies into predictable behaviour. You don’t throw rocks at the Lexus
showroom if you’ve got one parked in your garage. But as the current crisis
shows, not everyone got the Lexus, and the Olive Tree has deep roots. In fact,
the more globalised the world has become, the more some have doubled down on
identity, resistance, and sovereignty.
Where Friedman saw a flattening world, Chris Miller sees a world stratified by silicon — specifically, the chip. Chip War
argues that semiconductors are not just components of technology but weapons of statecraft, economic leverage, and military dominance. The entire global system runs on chips — from AI and cloud computing to missile guidance and cyber surveillance. And crucially,no one country controls the whole supply chain.
The Middle East,
too, is entangled in this chip narrative. Iran has been desperate to circumvent
sanctions by building its own tech capacity. Israel’s dominance in drone
technology, cyber tools, and precision warfare depends on cutting-edge chips.
The Gulf states, meanwhile, are investing in AI and digital infrastructure as
part of their post-oil futures. And yet, almost none of them can produce the
chips they need. They are at the mercy of a fragile, globally dispersed supply
chain — one increasingly weaponised by the likes of Washington and Beijing.
The chip is the
new oil — but it’s even more volatile.
Take the Houthis
in Yemen. A militia with rudimentary drones has managed to disrupt global
shipping in the Red Sea, sending freight costs soaring and rerouting traffic
around Africa. It’s a vivid example of what Miller and Friedman both recognised
in different ways: globalisation has
empowered non-state actors in unprecedented ways. The Houthis don’t need
to hold a capital city to project power; they just need a drone, a grievance,
and a global market to disrupt.
And the
consequences aren’t confined to the region. A spike in insurance premiums in
the Suez Canal or a supply delay for Taiwanese chips affects the global
economy. The butterfly effect of a regional flare-up now has boardroom and
battlefield consequences from Frankfurt to Free Town.
This fragility —
what Miller calls “the bottleneck economy” is the reality we now inhabit.
Whether it’s ASML’s lithography machines in the Netherlands, or Taiwan’s TSMC
factories, or Israel’s tech corridors, the supply chain that undergirds the
global economy is a high-wire act. And when tensions rise in the Middle East,
the whole system wobbles.
What both The
Lexus and the Olive Tree and Chip War remind us is that power is no
longer just about tanks and territory. It’s about networks, chips, and narrative. And the Middle East, long seen
through the prism of oil and ideology, is now a front in the battle for
technological and supply chain supremacy.
But to me, perhaps the deepest insight comes from the contrast between the two books. Friedman saw a world where prosperity would temper politics. Miller shows us a world where technology is politics. And in the Middle East today, the Olive Tree hasn’t been uprooted — it has simply grown into the data centres, missile batteries, and AI command rooms of the region’s new power players.
The old conflict
over identity, territory, and belief now plays out with silicon and software
layered on top.
In the end, the
question is not whether the Lexus can outrun the Olive Tree, or whether chips
will replace bullets. It is whether we are ready to govern a world where both
coexist in a deeply unstable equilibrium. A world where prosperity and progress
are still possible — but only if we understand the new rules of power.
And those
rules are being written — in code, in silicon, and increasingly, in the sands
of the Middle East.
For a small, pre-industrial country like Uganda, the lessons from Chip War and The Lexus and the Olive Tree
are both sobering and instructive. In a world where technological supremacy defines geopolitical clout and where global supply chains are both opportunity and threat, Uganda must recognise that digital sovereignty and data infrastructure are the new frontiers of development and security. While we may not build chips, we must invest in local talent, protect digital infrastructure, and strategically align with global tech blocs.
In a world
ruled by chips and chokepoints, staying non-aligned is not a strategy. It’s a
vulnerability. Uganda must leapfrog wisely—choosing the right alliances,
building digital capacity, and anchoring the Olive Tree in the soil of a
fast-changing global order.
