Work

The Legality of Logistics: On Techno-Orientalism and Geopolitics in Semiconductor Production

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This article explores and theorizes the interplay between law and logistics in the history of global semiconductor production, with a focus on the anti-Asian legislative interventions in the United States of America. It examines two pivotal American logistics-related legislative actions: the US-Japan Semiconductor Agreement of 1986 and the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. By investigating these episodes, this article offers a historicized commentary on the always-already intertwined and entangled nature of racial, legal cultural, computational, and logistical realms. Against the backdrop of colloquial militaristic language that commonly frames global logisticsasgeopolitical wars, the paper instead studies accounts of racialization in political and popular discourses that enable such linguistic formulations to be comprehensible in the first place. In doing so, it shows how logistical developments are more generally shaped by legal-cultural rhetoric and discourses and argues that we must understand techno-orientalism to be an important, continuing factor in the logistical histories of computation.

Source: IEEE Annals of the History of Computing

DOI: 10.1109/mahc.2025.3559418

Author: Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal

Institution: University of Basel

Language: English

Topic: Asian American and Pacific Histories

Subfield: Cultural Studies

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,995