this is bbc world news, the headlines: after dramatic scenes in the us house of representatives, the republican kevin mccarthy is finally elected speaker. it took 15 rounds of voting for mr mccarthy to win the job, despite his party having a majority in the chamber. the british prime minister, health secretary, and ministers from the treasury are meeting health experts in downing street to try to tackle the ongoing challenges facing the nhs in england. senior doctors say hospitals are on a knife—edge. iran has hanged two men for allegedly killing a security official during anti—government protests which have lasted for more than three months.

family members say they were not permitted to meet the men before they were killed. president volodymyr zelensky welcomes the announcement of the us supplying ukraine with armoured fighting vehicles for the first time. meanwhile, russia's unilateral ceasefire appears to have had little effect on the front line. you're watching bbc news. now, it's time for talking business. a hundred years ago, oil was the most sought after commodity. today, it's these chips that run the world. they provide the processing power for everything we use, from smartphones to aircraft and cars to microwaves. but the fight for who controls the supply chains, the network of companies that make these devices, is escalating. translation: we will focus on national strategic needs l and pool our resources together

to boost cutting edge research in science and technology domestically, and resolutely win the battle in key technologies. so instead of relying on chips made overseas in places like china, the supply chain for those chips will be here in america. welcome to talking business asia. i'm suranjana tewari. most semiconductors are made in asia. i'm in one of the areas of singapore where a lot of that fabrication happens, but the entire ecosystem stretches throughout the world. take this iphone, for example. it's been built around chips that were designed by apple over in the us, manufactured by companies like taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company, or tsmc, in taiwan. chips made injapan and south korea may also be in this phone. a lot of the assembly then happens in china.

with the war over chips heating up, countries like india might play a bigger role in production in the future. now, in this industry, size matters. the smaller, the better. these chips have transistors — think of tiny switches — and they measure about five nanometres. a nanometre is, get this, a millionth of a millimetre. just to put that into perspective, a human hair is 50,000 to 100,000 nanometres. so we're talking 50 to 100 times smaller than a strand of hair on my head. that's what enables, you know, our phone to get faster each generation, our digital photo archive to get bigger, our smart home devices to get smarter over time, you know, and our social media content to get richer. so that's definitely one of the goals. and that's what the semiconductor industry calls moore's law, essentially doubling the transistor density over time almost every two years. and that's a hard goal to achieve. the world's leading manufacturer

of semiconductors is taiwan. companies there, including tsmc, mass—produce the majority of these types of chips at the highest quality. at this point, only very, very few players, namely three across the globe, can manufacture the bleeding—edge semiconductor chips. those are the smallest transistors, the densest transistor ones. one of them is tsmc in taiwan, and tsmc commands the lion's share of leading—edge foundry capacity. and until very recently, i would say, they have been mainly building up capacity in taiwan. and that's why taiwan, as a region, plays a very important role in the semiconductor industry. the united states is concerned about this, and its reliance on taiwan. it's also concerned about china making advances in the sector. and so it's ramping up efforts to stop beijing's progress when it comes to chip technology. 0n china's part, it's made the production of cutting—edge chips a national priority.

it wants to be self—sufficient when it comes to semiconductors. it's not quite a high—tech superpower yet, and us controls are causing problems. translation: in order- to maintain tech hegemony, the united states has misused export control measures to maliciously block and suppress chinese businesses. this practice deviates from the principle of fair competition and violates international economic and trade rules. now the us is investing billions of dollars to expand the production of chips on american shores. the legislation that allows for that is called the us chips and science act. one of the companies taking advantage of it is micron. it's one of the biggest players in the memory chips business. memory chips are essential for anything that has a processor, but also for bigger items like supercomputers. i sat down with the chief executive of micron, and started by asking him how that legislation will affect his business. well, the us chips act is helping

level the playing field. over the course of the last couple of decades, a lot of the manufacturing of silicon moved to asia because of the incentives provided by the governments here, and now us chips act is able to bridge the cost gap that exists in production in the us versus asia. so us chips act will provide the necessary grants and the investment tax credits to enable more manufacturing in the us. yeah, i'm glad you mentioned cost, because there's a reason that the supply chains move to asia in the first place, isn't there? are you confident that the us can be the dominant manufacturer? well, the supply chains for memory manufacturing will be diversified. of course, micron has a well—diversified footprint of manufacturing here in asia, and micron will continue to invest in ourfabs in asia to meet the demand needs of the future. but also in order to meet the growth in demand, we need to add new capacity.

so us new manufacturing fabs that we'll be building in boise, idaho as well as near syracuse in new york, will be part of our overall global footprint, including fabs in the us as well as in asia, to supply the demand that is needed for the 2030 era demand. what are you telling your customers and your clients and your suppliers in this region, then, as the us ramps up its manufacturing? yeah, so micron investments in boise, idaho, when we announced that investment for manufacturing fab, we said we'll be investing $15 billion over the course of ten years. similarly for clay, new york, near syracuse, we have announced that we'll be investing $20 billion over a course of ten years to build a leading—edge memory manufacturing fab there. last year, we announced that micron will be investing $150 billion through the course of the decade

for leading—edge r&d and manufacturing worldwide. so you can see that majority of the investments will, of course, be occurring in our supply chain, wafer manufacturing and assembly and test manufacturing infrastructure that we have here in asia. so all of this is going to coexist. micron will continue to, of course, make investments in our asia manufacturing operations, wafer fab, as well as assembly and test, as well as continue to advance our r&d teams here in asia as we continue to bring up manufacturing in us to meet the second half of this decade demand. is the us right to be so concerned about china's progress on advanced semiconductors? well, ithink, you know, i'm not going to be commenting specifically on us policies because that is really a matter for the governments to decide. what is important is that there be a level playing field across the globe in terms of ability

to do free business, address the markets freely, and of course, factors such as ip protection as well. but the government has put its onus on manufacturers like yourself. what i will tell you is what micron is focused on, what we are focused on is continuing to maintain our technology, leadership, continuing to focus on strengthening, accelerating momentum in products, manufacturing excellence. if you look at micron today, we are focused on gaining our strength in the markets through these aspects of technology, manufacturing and product portfolio and deep customer engagements. and this is what has really positioned micron over the years in terms of industry—leading technologies that we produce. right here in singapore, micron produces the world's most advanced 232 layer nand. so as we navigate through these changing times on the global front,

of course we don't lose sight of what we need to do to maintain our technology, leadership and manufacturing excellence and strong products that meet the requirements of our customers. yeah, i mean, we're living in unique economic times, aren't we? there's rising inflation, there's rising interest rates, there's the war in ukraine, geopolitical tensions. how far does the us—china trade war affect micron�*s business? so, with respect to some of the factors that you mentioned, the russia—ukraine war, the covid lockdowns in china, of course, the high inflation impacting consumer demand for electronics, goods, and certainly the macroeconomic environment that is resulting in some cautionary sentiment on part of the businesses to buy products, all of these trends have certainly led to a change in the demand expectations for memory. and today, as you know,

customers during the covid period had supply chain shortages, they had semiconductor shortages, and they scrambled to get supply of semiconductors, and they built high levels of inventory. these are some of the factors impacting the demand to micron and to other memory suppliers today as well. and inventory adjustments are happening at our customers. the ordinary person doesn't get much insight into how something like the war in ukraine affects a semiconductor business. could you elaborate on that? well, you know, the war in ukraine certainly weakened the sentiment around electronics—buying, and resulted in some of the demand reduction. of course, you know, consumers, when they have to worry about energy, food, and of course, post—covid, some of the travel aspects, basically reallocation of consumer spend away from electronics toward food, energy and otherfactors.

so these are some of the factors that have impacted some of the consumer demand. as a memory chip—maker, you really have a first—hand pulse of the entire industry and the demand for consumer products. you've mentioned it already. what's your sense of the current economic conditions for the next year? 0ur memory industry currently is experiencing inventory adjustments by our customers in various end markets, and that has resulted in a reduction in demand to the suppliers of memories. we have taken decisive actions in terms of reducing our capex, in terms of reducing the supply growth, as well as increasing underutilisation in the current fabs. these actions over time will help us to bring supply and demand in balance. so yes, the near term is challenged by the inventory adjustments, but we have confidence in the longer—term demand drivers

are very much intact, and i'm confident that we will emerge stronger at the other end of the current downturn. that's the outlook from one of the biggest brands in the game. now companies are having to contend with a slowdown in the chip sector. plus, recent us export controls are disrupting the industry globally. translation: countries should stand up and not let _ washington's unilateralism and protectionism go unchecked. this concerns the stability of the global trade system and, more importantly, international justice. in october, the us introduced wide ranging controls requiring licenses for companies that export certain chips using us tools and software, no matter where they're made in the world. the controls also stop us companies from exporting goods and services to china for the manufacture of chips of a certain sophistication. now it's impossible

to produce the smallest, most advanced chips at scale without specialist equipment. china relies on international suppliers for that kit. washington's measures already stop american companies from supplying those machines to china. a dutch company called asml has a monopoly on the most advanced lithographic machines. japan also manufactures a lot of cutting—edge chip—making machines. the us is now asking both countries to restrict sales of these machines to china. washington's rules also target american citizens and green card holders working for certain chinese chip companies. that will effectively cut off a key pipeline of american talent to china, and further isolate the world's second largest economy from the global semiconductor ecosystem. even this camera i'm talking to you through uses chips. how small will they be in the future? how much power will they have, and where in the world will they be made?

well, to discuss this and more, i'm joined by chris miller, assistant professor of international history at the fletcher school of law and diplomacy at tufts university. he's also the author of chip wars: the fight for the world's most critical technology. linghao bao is a tech analyst at policy research firm trivium, china. hejoins me from shanghai. thank you both for speaking to the bbc. chris, if i can start with you. the us concerns about china advancing in chip technology, are they justified? well, there's no doubt that chinese firms have been making real strides in the past decade, especially in the sphere of chip design capabilities. and what you find historically is that whenever powerful countries have advanced computing technologies, they deploy them to intelligence and to military systems. so i think the us is not wrong to infer that as china makes more advances in chips and more advances in computing, it will try to apply

those to intelligence capability than to military systems, since that's what all great powers have tended to do in the past. linghao, if i can bring you in, how are the us efforts to try and prevent china from advancing and chip technology affecting chinese companies? i think the most famous example is huawei, right? the company was cut—off from getting advanced chips for a smartphone. and to give you a bit of context, like how of context, like how impactful that was, at that time, huawei was the second largest— smartphone maker in the world after samsung. but now huawei's smartphone business

is essentially dead. so that'sjust, you know, how easy it was for washington to cripple a chinese tech company. and if you look at the latest us export controls the that is the most aggressive actions that from the us we have seen. previously the us was targeting individual chinese companies, but this time the scope has expanded to the entire country. beijing has gone to the world trade organization and has lodged a complaint regarding these controls. i mean, does beijing have a point? what's happening right now is an arms race. there's an arms race between the chinese military and the us military in the asia—pacific region, and this is an arms race that takes place both in traditional spheres like numbers of ships or missiles produced, but increasingly it's taking place in terms of the quality of ai algorithms that can be employed in military systems. and if you look ten years down the road, that's going to be more and more important.

and so that's how both defence planners in beijing and washington view this issue. fairness, i don't think, is a criteria that either country is taking into account. and, linghao, if i can bring you in here, what are the main players saying about these types of controls in general? the sentiment on the ground is that, you know, this is unfair because if you're working in the china semiconductor industry, i think, different people in the industry are also well, have a different view because for chip—makers, they need they need those us equipment or the japanese equipment to make advanced chips.

but when the equipment ban happened, it was to create room for the local equipment makers to step into the market because previously there's really no market condition for them. if you could get a very advanced equipment from foreign countries, why would you take a chinese equipment that's less reliable and which is going to increase your production cost? so i think one of the knock—on effects of this export control is that it actually incentivises china's local semiconductor industry to fix these weak points they have been working on for years, but they haven't seen any progress. is this an opportunity for chinese companies? well, for certain chinese companies, it might be an opportunity. but for many others, it's, of course, an extraordinary headache because they have to find alternative sources of equipment, components that are, in many cases, not as good as what they were previously using. i think in aggregate, it's going to set the chinese

chip industry back by at least several years. even if you can find individual companies that might try to benefit. i think there's a common argument that you hear that, well, now facing these controls, the chinese government will really double down its support for the chip industry. i think that's actually unlikely, if only because the chinese government has been fully supporting its chip industry for much of the past decade. since 2014, chinese leaders have identified semiconductors as a major focus area for tens of billions of dollars a year in government support into the industry. so there's not that much more the chinese government can do that it already wasn't doing. i think chris is right that the government has thrown a lot of money into these sectors and they're also cognizant of that this is very capital intensive and the success rate

is actually pretty low. if you look at the development of the chinese semiconductor industry in the past ten years, ymtc, which is a memory chip—maker, is one of the very few success stories in china. so the government is very much aware of that. but i think there's one thing that sort of they're going to focus on is talent. because if you look at the export controls, one of the very damaging part is that it also bans us persons from supporting china's advanced chip—making. and if you look at the executive of china's semiconductor companies, a lot of them oppose american passport. they are trained in the us and they got green cards or whatever.

so that is really a big problem for china. and that's why you hear president xi jinping talk about how to get more talent into china during the 20th party congress report he delivered to the party when he took his third term. the us science and chips act, of course, is another tool that the us is using investment in the us through subsidies. will all those subsidies be enough to attract business to us shores? well, i think there's certainly an attractive, fair amount of investment. will they create a completely onshore chip supply chain? certainly not. but the one of the key drivers over the past two decades of increased investment in fabrication in east asia and taiwan and south korea and especially in china, was the cost differential between building a facility there versus in the us. and the key driver of the cost differential was not labour cost

because the labour costs are actually not that large in a very automated facility, but rather tax policy and tax incentives. so, what the us is trying to do with the chip science act is to level the playing field when it comes to tax incentives by offering some pretty generous tax policy, tax credits, to firms that build nuclearfacilities in the us. and the goal is to say the tools you put in the chip—making facility are the same regardless of which country you build a facility in. the power and electricity costs ought to be pretty similar. and so if the tax policy is similar as well, then there shouldn't be huge gaps in terms of the cost in producing in east asia versus in europe orjapan or the united states. then, so long as the chips and science act remains in place with the tax incentives that they've outlined, i think we will see a pretty meaningful increase in the amount of chip manufacturing facilities that are being

constructed in the us. is the us chips act a real threat to china? i don't think the us chip act is really something that china really worries about, i think what they worry about is the export controls. because i mean, if you look at the as chris mentioned, the tsmc arizona fab, yes, there are building that is going to be the most advanced fab in america. but when that fab kicks into mass production,

the tsmc's taiwan fab already moved on to next generation. so i think tsmc will always keep it's the most advanced chip making on the island. so that makes the island indispensable to the rest of semiconductor industry. but they sort of have to work with the us to have american interests to potentially defend the island, even in a china's aggression, a military aggression towards the island. so i'm not sure if that the chips act is really is on top of chinese leaders mind. i think in beijing's mind, they're really trying to focus on building its own semiconductor supply chain. five years down the road, i want you to tell me how small

you think the chips in my phone will be and where they will be produced. well, they're definitely well being produced in taiwan, without question. tsmc is the leading edge of advanced chip—making, right? i mean, that's why apple is having its chips being manufactured by tsmc. i'm not sure how small, i don't know how to count the atoms, so i can't tell you how small it's going to be, but it's going to be pretty small. i agree with that answer. i think the question that i set next to that one is in ten years' time, where will the most advanced chip used in data centres be produced? because the smartphone market has peaked in size today, almost everyone has a smartphone and the real growth market is in al and data centres. and i think that's where chip—makers are focused right now. and there's an open question as to which companies and which countries will win the lion's share of that market over the next decade. and that's where i think the next battle in the chip war is going to be fought.

thank you both for talking to the bbc. that's all for this edition of talking business asia. thanks for watching. good afternoon. heavy downpours make up one half of our weekend weather story. the other side of the coin, some very strong and gusty winds whipping up some big waves along some of our coasts. what's in charge of the weather at the moment? well, it's a big area of low pressure. this swirl of cloud on the earlier satellite image. this band of cloud here brought rain for many of us through the first part of the day. that rain clearing eastwards. behind it, sunny spells but scattered heavy showers with some hail and some thunder mixing in. the winds picking up once again towards the end of the day around some western areas and temperatures as we close out the afternoon between seven and ten degrees. so as we head into tonight, our area of low pressure, quite a deep low, pushes close to the northwest of scotland, gales likely around some western coast, but especially in western scotland with gusts of 60 to 70 miles per hourfor a time through the night, there will be further showers blown along

on that strong wind, some clear spells in between. and partly because of the strength of the wind, it's not going to be a particularly cold night, lows between four and eight degrees. so we head into sunday and it is a sunshine and showers day. some of the showers will be heavy with hail and thunder. the showers tending tojoin up into bands. and it's likely that across high ground in scotland, say above four or five hundred metres, we will see some snow mixing in. it's going to be another windy day. some inland spots perhaps not quite as windy as today, but very blustery around some coasts, particularly out towards the west. and temperatures again between seven and ten degrees. now, as we look ahead to monday, there are some more showers in the forecast being blown across the country by this quite brisk north westerly wind. that's bringing some slightly chillier air. so some of the showers will be wintry over higher ground, say, from wales northwards. but most of what falls on the sky will be rain. temperatures in a range between six and ten degrees.

now, a brief window of drier weather for monday night, but that doesn't last long. on tuesday, this next frontal system will hurtle in from the atlantic. that's going to bring further heavy rain, some strong and gusty winds. and then as we look further ahead through the week, it does stay quite unsettled. showers or longer spells of rain. maybe turning a bit colder in the north by the very end of the week.

this is bbc news — welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. our top stories: after dramatic scenes in the us house of representatives, the republican kevin mccarthy is finally elected speaker — at the fifteenth attempt. it's not how you start it's how you finish, and we need to finish strong for the american people. the uk's prime minister is meeting health officials in an attempt to tackle the ongoing challenges facing the national health service. iran hangs two men for allegedly killing a security official during anti—government protests. and fighting on a new front — we meet the ukrainian tech

entrepreneurs seeking investment from the west.