White House, Intel, and TSMC Reportedly In Talks to Reshore U.S. Chip Production

The White House, Intel, and a Taiwanese chipmaker are writing up plans to reshore production, the WSJ reports. The issue, as U.S. officials see it: Manufacturing of critical tech supplies is largely concentrated in Asia.

That’s especially true for chips, since many American companies source semiconductors from factories in Taiwan. American chipmakers Qualcomm, Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD all rely on TSMC, the dominant Taiwanese contract chipmaker, for advanced hardware manufacturing.

The U.S. government is lobbying TSMC and Intel to bring their chipmaking prowess to a state-of-the-art facility on U.S. soil, capable of producing chips with transistors 10 nanometers or smaller. The Pentagon has reportedly been holding discussions with TSMC to develop a U.S. chip foundry since October. One reason why: Fighter jets require advanced chipsets.

Big picture: A supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link. U.S. officials see the hardware dependency on Asian manufacturing as a weak link.