Sujai Shivakumar, Charles Wessner, and Christina Alfonso
Recent trends, driven by major industrial policies of other countries, have eroded U.S. leadership in advanced semiconductor manufacturing. The United States has also seen an erosion of onshore chipmaking, which now accounts for only about 10 percent of global capacity. Meanwhile, China—the United States’ most formidable strategic competitor—is making rapid strides in semiconductor manufacturing, particularly in defense-related sectors, fueled by massive public subsidies.
In this context, the United States needs to build on its assets to secure the future of this strategically valuable industry. While we rightly celebrate U.S. leadership in designing chips, we must also recognize the significant value to the nation embedded in Intel Corporation’s deep network of knowledge, resources, and relationships that underpin its ability to produce extremely complex and sensitive technologies that are key to many aspects of the U.S. economy and, not least, national defense. This complex network with a capable U.S. firm at its core took many years to grow and is of major strategic value. Especially given its scale, Intel plays a key role in sustaining the industrial commons that anchor the activities of other semiconductor companies in the United States. Notwithstanding its current challenges, Intel cannot be left unsupported—particularly in today’s fraught geopolitical landscape—as a much-diminished Intel would have major negative consequences for U.S. economic and national security.
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