Chris Miller is Professor of International History at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. His research focuses on technology, geopolitics, economics and international affairs. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a director at Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical consultancy.
His book Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology, published by Scribner in 2022, traces the development of the semiconductor industry and its relationship with economic and strategic power. It connects scientific and commercial decisions with the production networks that now underpin digital technologies. The book won the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award.
Miller's wider research examines economic and political change, including through his previous books Putinomics, The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy and We Shall Be Masters. He holds a PhD in history from Yale University and a BA in history from Harvard University. That historical foundation informs his interpretation of the institutions, investment decisions and international relationships behind technology competition.
For business audiences, Miller's contribution is to connect a product or computing strategy with the industrial system that makes it possible. The questions extend from where components are produced to how expertise, equipment and policy influence access. His work helps make those dependencies intelligible to leaders who need to assess their strategic significance without becoming semiconductor engineers.
He is particularly relevant to discussions of AI infrastructure, supply-chain resilience and industrial policy. A useful executive brief asks which technological inputs the organisation depends on, how concentrated those inputs are and what conditions could alter access. His perspective supplies historical and geopolitical context for that decision, rather than a guarantee about future markets or technology availability.
Portrait photograph by Anthony Tulliani, via Simon & Schuster.
