Today, in honor of the first anniversary of the CHIPS Act, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, “The CHIPS for America program is a historic opportunity to solidify America’s leadership and protect national security.”
Yes, the CHIPS Act is an important step in developing our own capabilities, but to be successful, we need to play offense and defense. Former Pentagon Chinese tech advisor Steve Coonen makes this point in the video below.
Coonen cautions that we shouldn’t assist adversaries like China by supplying them with the semiconductor manufacturing equipment that they need to boost their own capabilities. For China, the ultimate aim is to dominate the global semiconductor market. We’ve seen this playbook before. China will subsidize and dominate – just like it did with solar – and if we don’t wise up, it’s at the peril of our own security. He also references comments from Matt Pottinger, former Deputy National Security Advisor, to drive this point home as Pottinger has “observed that a Chinese buildup of legacy chip-making capacity would ‘give Beijing coercive leverage over every country and industry—military or civilian—that depend on 28-nanometer chips, and that’s a big, big chunk of the chip universe.’”
For more information, watch his video below and visit EveryChipMatters.com.