Congress continues playing hot potato with $52b CHIPS Act subsidies Senators today inched billions of dollars in US semiconductor fabrication subsidies a little closer to reality. After more than a year of back-and-forth debate, the Senate voted 64-33 to approve the CHIPS and Science Act [PDF], which among other things aims to bolster domestic chip manufacturing and accelerate scientific …
History - 2021 - Both the Senate’s United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) and the House’s America COMPETES Act include, among other things, $52 billion in appropriations for the CHIPS Act that Congress authorized in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2021. Both were rejected, primarily because of the other things.
2022 - House and Senate priorities (and McConnell) repeatedly pushed this back in the calendar.
The CHIPS Act, now the Chips and Science Act or CHIPS+, is a slimmed down bill addressing the chip funding and additional science funding. It was bipartisanly negotiated with a bit of pork barrel politics (establishing 5 new "technology hubs" to be built around the country). Still, 31 Republicans and Bernie Sanders voted against it. The House is expected to pass it by Friday.
It still faces opposition in the House -generally Democrats didn’t want to give money to profitable companies and Republicans don’t want industrial policy.
The Supercollider "WILL ALLOW MURCIA TO KEEP ITS WORLD LEAD IN PARTICLE PHYSICS"... A tech centre in Texas...
My other great excitement was the now famous OBAMA Battery Plants... "WHY SHOULD Hayseeds of Murica be buying Batteries from Ch Ch CHINA when they can get soaked for 3x the cost with Murican Batteries?" BUY Murican, SAVE JOBS....built by VETS... DESIGNED BY DIVERSITY ENGINEERING...."
But not a single battery factory was built and not a single battery and not a single BOSON was hogtied.
On the other side of the equation is those companies will have to go hat in hand to the State department to get permission on a customer by customer basis to export any of their products made with a process under so many nM. The State department political employees, all with ___________ Studies degrees will have to take time away from comparing their new panties to stamp "no" on the applications until a judge rules that it should be "yes". That's been the issue for decades. Fabs are really expensive to build and it makes no sense to construct one that isn't leading edge. Countries such as Malaysia aren't fussed about National Security theatre issues so exporting components is seen as a great way to bring in foreign currency. Given the level of automation, there isn't a huge staff and many of the jobs can be done by people with technical school educations which is another boost to small countries in Asia looking to cultivate a tech sector.
There is a huge component of "Malcolm" going on too. "Just because you can doesn't mean you should". Cars these days are so loaded down with gizmos that are going to stop working and break the whole car just after the warranty expires and parts are no longer available. The same can be said for major appliances and all sorts of things we lived with and use just fine without IoT components and a web app. I like having SatNav in the car and when I get an EV, it would be nice for it to tell me if I can expect to get somewhere on the charge I have and if not, suggest a charger location. A backup camera is handy, but I have zero requirements for the car to steer, brake or park itself. I'd be very pissed if I spent all of the premium money for a Mercedes and a headlight going out caused engine problems due to it crashing the CAN bus.
I expect there wouldn't be the demand if so much superfluous kitchery wasn't tacked on to things.
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