Article submitted by Noah Liot. In 1950 Jean Monnet persuaded Europe that pooling coal and steel would make another Franco-German war almost impossible. The idea was control – own the inputs and constrain the conflict. Steel decided the last century’s wars. This century’s are being decided by semiconductors, yet Europe makes none of the advanced chips on which its weapons, financial system and frontier economy now depend. That dependency is usually misfiled under competitiveness – innovation grants and industrial strategy. But advanced chips are no longer merely an input to growth; they are the substrate of military power and the…
