Why Electronics is at the Center of the New Industrial Strategy Debate

Key Summary:

• Three influential Substack essays are reshaping the debate on industrial strategy, technology competition, and the electronics industry.
• They show how falling costs in the electric stack and China’s strength in modular manufacturing are redefining global competitiveness.
• They also highlight why mature-node semiconductors remain strategically critical alongside AI and leading-edge chips.

by Chris Mitchell, chief advocacy officer, Global Electronics Association

Some of the most compelling thinking on industrial strategy and technology competition is appearing on Substack, well outside the think tanks and trade publications where these conversations used to live. Three pieces worth your time:

• The Electric Slide by Packy McCormick and Sam D'Amico traces how the cost of the electric stack—batteries, motors, power electronics, embedded compute—has fallen 99% since 1990, why China now dominates it, and why AI leadership alone is not a winning strategy. Long but worth it.
• Everything is Computer by Ryan McEntush at a16z argues that every modern physical product is a variation on the smartphone, and that competitive advantage lives in the "modular middle" between raw components and finished goods. China has mastered this layer. The United States has not.
• The Chip the World Forgot by Normandie Research offers another sharp corrective. Mature-node chips (28nm and above) run automotive, defense, power, and medical systems and represent the largest share of global foundry revenue. Western export controls have ignored this layer almost entirely while China has aggressively built capacity there. This makes 28nm node just as much contested terrain as the 2nm node.