On a snowy Friday in January, dignitaries from both political parties braved the chill of a central New York winter for the groundbreaking ceremony of Micron Technology’s planned $100 billion manufacturing complex in Clay, a town not far from Syracuse. Over the next 20 years, Micron is promising the region thousands of jobs and the revitalization of a community hard hit by the decline of manufacturing.
Since President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022, billions of public dollars have flowed into domestic semiconductor manufacturing as the United States seeks to revitalize an industry that was born in the U.S. before it was largely outsourced to East Asia. Both Democrats and Republicans have argued that domestic chip production is essential to national security, citing the role advanced semiconductors play in military systems as well as in critical infrastructure like financial and telecommunications networks.
