Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1519075
36 PCB007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2024 Aer four years of deliberation and lobby- ing by some of the largest companies in the world, Congress passed the CHIPS Act, which injected a much-needed $52 billion invest- ment into the semiconductor industry. Private investment of several hundred billion followed. Government officials' rationale for the legisla- tion was that it was unacceptable that our share of the production of semiconductors had fallen to 12%. While that is an attention-grabbing sta- tistic and was a key talking point for the legis- lative action, it addresses just one-third of the technology stack. Here are two more alarming statistics that have mostly fallen off the radar: We make less than 1% of the IC substrates and a mere 4% of ose of us who have been in the industry for any length of time know America manufac- tures very little of the world's supply of micro- electronics. is happened over decades and was invisible or ignored by policymakers as companies shipped both their ideas and their production to Asia—and made a good profit in the process. About five years ago, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle realized the pendu- lum had swung too far, and we were almost totally dependent on foreign nations for both the manufacturing and the workforce to pro- duce semiconductors, integrated circuit sub- strates, and printed circuit boards: the essen- tial elements of modern life. What About the Rest of the Technology Stack? American Made Advocacy by Travis Kelly, PCBAA