President Biden Should Sign the CHIPS Act To Protect American Security

This week, the Senate and House voted to pass the CHIPS Act, one of the most consequential pieces of national security legislation in recent history.  This piece of legislation is dedicated to increasing U.S. domestic manufacturing of semiconductors, and it is essential that President Biden now move quickly to sign it into law.  Failure to do so would be an enormous victory for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and a massive loss for America.  Our economic and national security depends on this bill.

Semiconductors are the critical component in electronics that every American depends on their daily lives, from cell phones to cars all the way up to our advanced military systems.  Much as dependence on Russian energy has made it difficult for Europe to properly deter Putin in Ukraine, American dependence on hostile nations for semiconductors risks catastrophic outcomes for all of us here in America.

While the United States continues to lead in the design of semiconductor chips, our production of has fallen behind. In 1990, the United States produced 37% of the world’s supply of semiconductors. Today, we produce about 10%, most of which are not the cutting-edge chips that enable more sophisticated electronic functions in our military and economy.  That means the equipment our nation deploys on present and future battlefields, from defensive radars to advanced weapons systems, currently relies on technology that America must almost entirely import from foreign producers. One cannot overstate the massive risk this poses to our economic and national security.

China knows this. That’s why a key national goal of the Chinese Communist Party is for the People’s Republic of China to become the world’s semiconductor leader, in both production and design.  It is why they have been stealing American intellectual property in this critical field for decades, and a big reason why they continue to threaten an invasion of Taiwan, where most of the world’s semiconductors are currently produced. If we allow the CCP’s ambition to become a reality, America and its allies would be subject to Beijing’s economic coercion, and our military would be left without a reliable supply of the semiconductors that allow it to function at the high level needed to maintain superiority.

This would be disastrous, for American security depends on our military continuing to be the most advanced in the world.  I saw the importance of our technological dominance patrolling the Berlin Wall when I commanded an M1 Abrams tank crew.  Our tanks were the best in the world then, better than the Soviet’s T-72s.  Today America retains this advantage. But if we remain dependent on foreign entities to maintain this advantage, our adversaries will only be emboldened further, and our advantage will disappear.

In May 2020, I and others in the Trump Administration helped encourage the world-leading Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) to announce $12 billion worth of investments in semiconductor production in Arizona. In the two years since, we have seen similar announcements from U.S. firm Intel (in Ohio), U.S. firm Micron (location TBD), South Korean firm Samsung (in Texas), and others. But deals like these are predicated on greater U.S. government commitments to the industry; without CHIPS, the number of investments will shrink.

CHIPS is necessary, but it cannot be all that we do.  The threat posed by the Chinese is here right now, inside the gates.  CHIPS should be accompanied by a ban on all Chinese-manufactured chips.  No U.S. company should be allowed to invest in Chinese chips or use them in their products while continuing to do business with the U.S. government. We should use secondary sanctions to make sure no other nation uses these Chinese chips in their technology as well.  We should also prohibit Chinese students and researchers from studying in the USA on advanced topics related to this technology – American universities training our enemy, so they might one day surpass and dominate us, is stunningly naïve.

We must recognize the urgency of onshoring domestic semiconductor manufacturing and act accordingly.  Sign CHIPS into law, increase onshore domestic chip production, and stop aiding the CCP’s ambitions to dominate this critical technology.  The cost of failure would be no less than the loss of American independence and security.

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