The annual ISSCC Forum is dubbed the “Olympics of Chips.” As a young engineer, I attended. Despite intense commercial competition, the global forum wowed me. The brightest minds from MIT, Stanford, Cambridge, and elsewhere competed with engineers from major chip firms for attention to their breakthroughs in solid-state circuits and systems-on-a-chip.
This year’s forum in San Francisco featured MediaTek’s Rick Tsai from Taiwan, IBM’s Heike Riel, Cadence’s Anirudh Devgan, and Apple’s Hope Giles. But the public program listed no plenary speaker from a major Chinese chip or AI company.
Global technical exchange and commercial networking built the chip industry. Engineers, chipmakers, equipment suppliers, customers, and investors met at the same conferences and trade shows. That cooperative international circuit is now broken into a world of rival technology industries, with democratic semiconductor powers pitted against authoritarian China.
Although the Silicon Curtain is not as closed as the former Iron Curtain across Europe, it is increasingly alliance-centered. The risk of allowing China to steal and speed ahead is real. But breaking all ties with China could be counterproductive, cutting Western chipmakers off from the crucial Chinese market, slowing down innovation, and incentivizing China to go it alone and accelerate its rise into a formidable competitor.
Unlike general tech trade shows that focus on consumer gadgets, ISSCC focuses on the underlying silicon design, transistor density, and engineering techniques that make those gadgets possible. Throughout my later career in semiconductor sales and marketing, I regularly attended CeBIT, Mobile World Congress, Computex, IBC, and IFA. These were not simply exhibitions; they were practical marketplaces where companies from Europe, the US, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and China built partnerships and supply chains for their products.
Such events will remain internationally mixed longer than frontier technical conferences because they serve global markets for consumer electronics. SEMICON China, for example, still markets itself as a platform connecting companies to China’s large microelectronics market and features international speakers from firms such as US chipmaker AMD and German industrial powerhouse Siemens.
But the rules of engagement are changing. The most advanced chips, manufacturing tools, AI infrastructure, telecoms equipment, cloud services, and sensitive design information are increasingly subject to export controls, procurement limits, investment screening, and security review.
The new pattern is not a clean decoupling. Commerce persists in mature parts of the semiconductor chain. But frontier collaboration is increasingly concentrated among trusted allies. China is building an autonomous chip system.
Some organizations are attempting to bridge the blocs. ISIG represents a useful example of the commercial middle ground. The London-based semiconductor executive network runs events both in China and the West, positioning itself as a place where senior industry leaders can still meet across regional boundaries.
ISIG’s Shanghai event brought together executives from firms including Renesas China, Lam Research, WeEn, and SPEA China to discuss AI compute, power, packaging, test, manufacturing, and cooling. Its India and Japan events similarly connect governments, suppliers, investors, and technical leaders.
Although ISIG can still facilitate legitimate business in mature and less-sensitive areas, it cannot freely bridge the frontier technologies that governments increasingly define as strategic assets.
Conferences are more than industry calendar entries. They reveal where the global technical commons still works, where commercial bridges remain viable, and where the Silicon Curtain is already descending. We will not return to the halcyon days of 1988 when I was working on audiovisual chips or INMOS/ST Microelectronics. Philips was a world leader. Rudy van de Plassche, their leading analogue/mixed-signal designer, gave a presentation. It was like seeing Michael Jordan play basketball.
As we move forward in the AI era, the policy challenge is not to ban every bridge: the US and its allies benefit from legitimate trade, standards work, mature-node supply, and business contact with China. But policymakers should recognize that the world’s most sensitive semiconductor technologies are no longer discussed, developed, financed, or marketed in politically neutral spaces.
Winston Churchill delivered the “Iron Curtain” speech, officially titled “The Sinews of Peace,” on March 5, 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. “From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent,” the former Prime Minister warned, calling for a “special relationship” to counter Soviet expansion.
It took four and a half decades before the Soviet Union collapsed. In the interim, the West stayed united and engaged with Moscow from a position of strength. The silicon Cold War may also last decades. Engagement remains necessary to win.
Christopher Cytera CEng MIET is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the Digital Innovation Initiative at the Center for European Policy Analysis. He is a technology business executive with over 30 years of experience in semiconductors, electronics, communications, video, and imaging.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
Steel and Silicon: Allied Innovation for the Next Century
2026 CEPA Tech & Security Conference
