Comment les semi-conducteurs sont-ils devenus un cas de containment technologique ?

TEARS OF JOY CHANGED INTO THOSE OF PAIN January 28, 1986. It was just another day in the whirlpool of news and speculations of a new Foreign Correspondent to be assigned to the White House. Shivering on his way to the most important political center of the Western World, resisting arctic cold and snow on the way to work, hardly ever seeing the President himself. Instead, he found himself on this fateful day in a rendez-vous with Tom Foley, majority leader in the House of Representa ...

“ARE THEY PLAYING US? I DO NOT KNOW” There they were, the North Koreans, covered by red flags, and more red flags — a Hollywood production indeed. Were the soldiers singing? There was nothing to sing about since they're marching for endless hours, being scrutinized by cameras and bothered by aching pains of hunger, unable to speak and stimulate their voice. The colonel in charge of the marchers may discover some rusty spot on a belt buckle or a truck on parade may run out of fuel - ...

“NONE OF AFRICA’S PROBLEMS CAN BE RESOLVED THROUGH MILITARY FORCE” Colonel Raul Rivas arrived in dress uniform, his parachute citations well polished. His ribbons for bravery and combat duty were aligned at the upper left-hand side of his jacket, a colorful display of combat, death and battles in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The Colonel, just a few years above 40, and despite his 21 years in the military, was as “proud of being an American as one can be,” a true patriot. He jumped out ...

Not far from highway 95, near a town named Lathrop Wells, only one establishment, besides the petrol station, was known to the rough cowboys and joyless soldiers of the nearby nuclear testing site, and that was “Mabel’s whore house”, advertised as such without shame and ready to accept credit cards. Luigi Raugi, a legal immigrant (from Sicily), as it is wise to insist these repressing days of  American immigrant bashing, was running the local drugstore and really excited, as were t ...

Donald Trump, a golf addict with a self-declared handicap of 3, is not noted for any chess enthusiasm, although the game is a simulation of a battle, and filled with military terminology such as double attack, demolition, breakthrough, decoying, interception, blockade, and x-ray attack among others. The historic game is intellectual, structured, and logic. The object is to maneuver the antagonist’s king into a position from which escape is impossible. The two contenders - at times - ...

“Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and smart” (Donald Trump on Twitter). A menace in 223 characters - an imaginary video game moving slowly towards the reality of Hiroshima. History on collision course with our future. No thought about victims, no word of destruction, just “you should not be partner with a gas killing animal, who kills his people and enjoys it.” The Commander in Chief of the Un ...

The 132nd day in the Gregorian calendar, anno 2018, will be part of history, a day future generations will most likely not forget, the 12th of May. Only history buffs will remember that on the 12th day of May, Napoleon conquered Venice, once known as the “Most Serene Republic”. On May 12th and the following days in the year of 1940, the Nazis crossed the Meuse and defeated France in a Blitzkrieg. England’s King George VI celebrated his coronation in 1937, on this same fateful day, w ...

The young women sitting in the Olympic ice hockey stadium of Kwandong, South Korea, were dressed like a group of gorgeous stewardesses on an outing after graduating from flight school, or as if they were celebrating the survival of an emergency landing. They applauded in a very methodical fashion, a well-studied rhythm that their eternal Supreme leader Kim Jong-Un certainly did not learn at his Swiss boarding school “Liebefeld Steinhoelzi” near Bern, Switzerland. Who dares to confir ...

The Soviet crew faced death in the depth of the Caribbean. Their submarine of the diesel powered “Foxtrott” class, registered as “B -52”, had been transformed into a gigantic metal coffin. It was in October 1962, the month when the world stopped breathing. The end, nuclear war, seemed near. Human civilization has never faced such an APOCALYPSE in history. The unthinkable was likely to happen. Washington and Moscow, here the leaders of the free capitalistic world, and there the repre ...

Déjà illustré par le retournement diplomatique des années 1970, le débat stratégique américain sur la Chine est ancien. C’est dans les années 1990 qu’il prend toute son ampleur cependant : au lendemain de la chute de l’URSS et à la veille des bouleversements du 11 septembre 2001, alors que la puissance chinoise commence à s’envoler sur les terrains économiques et militaires, la communauté de politique étrangère américaine multiplie les analyses sur ce nouveau grand acteur des relati ...