About a week ago, a viral post declared that on July 19, China had “killed the silicon wafer.”
The claim was explosive: a breakthrough in a new semiconductor material called indium selenide (InSe) had supposedly rendered the entire Western chip ecosystem — from Intel’s FABs to TSMC’s foundries and America’s sanctions — obsolete overnight.
China, the post argued, had not just won the chip war; it had “exited the battlefield” by mastering a new law of atomic physics.
Like many things on the internet, this narrative was a dramatic oversimplification. But it was pointing at a real and significant event. On July 18, researchers from Peking University and Renmin University of China published an article detailing a novel method for the mass production of high-quality InSe wafers.
While this achievement won’t kill silicon tomorrow, it represents a genuine strategic leap. It signals that while the West has been focused on blockading the current technological paradigm, China is aggressively working to invent the next one.
