Armed with $52 billion, a team of experts drawn from the worlds of finance, science and technology, national security, economic policy, trade and the environment have assembled at the Commerce Department to attempt to reverse a decades-long decline in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.
The experts at the CHIPS program office are charged with enticing the world’s largest chipmakers to the U.S. to fashion cutting-edge semiconductors used in weapons and supercomputers, as well as in more ordinary devices like thermostats. The goal is to break the dependence that many American manufacturers of missiles, spy satellites, telecom gear and medical devices have on suppliers primarily based in Taiwan and South Korea.
In the event of a war or a blockade by China, the worry is that U.S. companies may not get the needed chips.
