Computer chips are a battleground in geopolitics and national security

As part of our series of articles on the National Security and Investment Act 2021 and what it means for high tech businesses and their investors, I have written a piece about the 'computing hardware' sector, being one of the sensitive areas of the economy the Act applies to.

Other sectors caught by the Act - like AI, advanced robotics, quantum, and synthetic biology - are attracting huge amounts of investment and public and regulatory attention.

However, it's important not to discount the importance of the computer chipmaking industry, which is producing much of the computing power that enabled those advanced technologies.

It's clear the UK government isn't discounting its importance. As I say in the piece, the government may have had in mind the case of British chipmaker ARM and its acquisition by Japanese investment house Softbank (and a more recent aborted bid by an even bigger chipmaker, Nvidia).

The Act is broad in its scope when it comes to computing hardware and there is much to consider for hardware businesses, the industries that support it, and their investors in the context of proposed transactions in this area.