At a White House dinner on 24 February, Joe Biden held up a microchip and recalled a popular saying: “Remember that old proverb: for want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost.” And – as the proverb goes – without the horse, the messenger was lost; without his message, the battle was lost; and so on until, eventually, the empire itself was lost. For the empire which is the United States, that nail – according to Biden – is the microchip.