How should the US restore domestic leading-edge chip fabrication?

David Cahn · Aug 5, 2024 · hedged

The US will invest in onshoring its chip supply chain in response to the geopolitical risk of Taiwan concentration.

All the chips come from Taiwan and there is heavy reliance on TSMC, which everyone recognises as a risk.

Scope: unclear how much actually gets onshored or how

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Aravind Srinivas · Jun 15, 2026

America has already woken up to the importance of domestic fabs — TSMC Arizona, Intel with government and Nvidia/SoftBank stakes, Elon's TerraFab — so the 'we need our own TSMC' framing understates what's underway

TSMC is investing around $150B into American fabs with $40-60B already deployed, and the US government owns 10% of Intel

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Andrew Ng · Nov 17, 2025 · hedged

Continuing to cultivate America as a magnet for global talent and securing the semiconductor supply chain would be valuable policy priorities for American AI leadership

Many US Nobel laureates are immigrants, and America's dependency on TSMC is concerning if anything happens to Taiwan

11:05 Secure the supply chain because taiwan dependency is the risk

Andrew Feldman · May 26, 2026

It is extraordinarily important that the US regain cutting-edge fabs and the surrounding packaging ecosystem, which are strategic assets — and the right route is not the CHIPS Act or subsidising Intel

In losing the fabs the US also lost packaging expertise and a whole set of strategic surrounding jobs and industry

42:16 Regain fabs and packaging but not via chips act subsidies

Andrew Feldman · May 26, 2026

The single best policy change would be to exempt TSMC and Samsung from all local ordinances for twenty years so they can build fabs wherever they want in the US, using the same construction rules they use in Taiwan

Local ordinances are disastrous and were never intended to govern structures like fabs, which are the most sophisticated things humans manufacture

43:32 Exempt foreign fabs from local ordinances for twenty years