Top Senators want controls on US contractors using Chinese chips

Two top US Senators are pushing a proposal that would bar the federal government from working with companies that use semiconductors made by firms deemed to be Chinese military contractors.   Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) are pushing an amendment to the National Defense …

[martinusher]

Define "made"

Its one of those words that's obvious, everyone knows what it means, except that they don't really. Semiconductors are a good example of 'non-artisanal' products. I daresay that someone, somewhere, takes raw silicon and bashes it into integrated circuits, a bit like those (Highly skilled) enthusiasts you find on youTube building replicas of early thermionic values from scratch, but most complex products are truly global Compared to the entity list this 'turn it up to 11' approach is crass, it shows grandstanding senators who blindly thrash about in areas they know nothing about to please a base that also hasn't a clue about how things work.

Time to retire?

[StrangerHereMyself]

I agree

Software and hardware made in China are a huge threat as we've seen in the SuperMicro case. Nothing made in China should go into our military systems, unless they're completely vetted (which is nigh impossible).

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: I agree

>as we've seen in the SuperMicro case

The totally made up / no evidence story by a news organisation whose owner was considering a presidential run?

>Nothing made in China should go into our military systems,

Every last memory chip, resistor, capacitor ?

That's going to bloat some budgets and lead to a lot of delays.

Unless of course you are happy to look the other way while a "veteran owned" US company swears that the PCB you bought was all American parts and skip any retesting of critical systems built with entirely new components.

In fact given that every component in your military systems are now going to be grey-market sourced with faked documentation I expect a lot of failures.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I agree

"made in China"

Not just 'made', think about 'assembled' as well...

Those Apple iDevices, Cisco routers and switches, assembled in China by Foxconn

[MachDiamond]

Why aren't fabs in the US

The senators need to figure out why companies aren't very interested in building fabs in the US. It isn't labor costs as there isn't much labor in the parts. If the government has to pay a company to do something, that government doesn't understand why it isn't being done.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Why aren't fabs in the US

Because it's likely to be a very expensive hassle compared to building fab32 alongside fab31 in your home country.

You need staff. You can wait for the local Ag college to start turning out semiconductor process PhDs or you can try and poach people from other fields. But since you took a big bribe incentive to build you plant in bumfuck Nowhere, it's difficult to attract Stanford faculty to relocate. If they did move, what would their partners do ? If they buy houses they push up prices out of the reach of locals creating political backlash.

You get the fab built and politics change, suddenly the governor that wanted inward investment doesn't want all these foreign companies.

A president announces that it's disgusting that he sees so many German cars in NY, German car maker tries to point out that they are all made in the USA but sales still tank. Import blocks on components / feedstocks / parts / machinery start leading to shutdowns.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Why aren't fabs in the US

"Because it's likely to be a very expensive hassle compared to building fab32 alongside fab31 in your home country."

In the US it is the State department putting restrictions on export and constantly being 10 years behind on what's cutting edge at the moment. Build the fab in Malaysia and the Malays are more than happy to support the facility with roads, expedited permits and cutting the red tape that can be found elsewhere. That and no export restrictions.

[Anonymous Coward]

What wait years for return on a fab when you can realize tens of percents or return a year on vacuous speculation of one kind or another (especially if you are a Senator on the inside track).

And when the bubble inevitably collapses and a there is lull in vacuous speculation opportunities, then there is certainly no money to invest in fabs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this backfire ?

I can see a future date where an air gaped compute cluster is going to be far far cheaper if sourced with China only chips (or possibly India only chips). They do have an internal market of 18.47% of the planets population (India has 17.7%) , so if they end up servicing their own internal market, simply by economy of scale they will eventually be cheaper than anyone else can make them. And if used only for air gaped compute it does not really matter if they have backdoors that can never be accessed.

The US may become a technological second or even third world nation at some future date.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Could this backfire ?

No it's fantastic news

Intel fabs chiplets at TSMC in Taiwan, it then "assembles" these "components" into Pure American CPUs in a robot plant in some flyover state

All federal government agencies, and anyone doing business with them, and anyone receiving federal grants are required to buy Patriotic Purity chips at a mere 100% markup.

Thus tax payers money funnels to Intel, increasing the wealth of Intel executives and shareholders.

This wealth trickles down, as prophesied by the great Ronald, and we all get richer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Could this backfire ?

nit-pick:

Please look up the different meanings of:

gape --> gaped

and

gap --> gapped

and fire your spell-checker