In Licking County, Ohio, fleets of dump trucks and bulldozers are shifting earth on the future site of chip factories. Intel is building two “fabs” there at a cost of around $20bn. In March President Joe Biden called this expanse of dirt a “field of dreams” in his state-of-the-union speech. It was “the ground on which America’s future will be built”, he intoned.
In the spring it was easy to be dreamy about America’s chip industry. The pandemic-induced semiconductor crunch had proved just how crucial chips were to modern life. Demand was still rising for all sorts of chip-powered technology, which these days is most of it. Investors were less gloomy on chips than on other tech, which was taking a stockmarket beating. The CHIPS act was making its way through Congress, promising to plough subsidies worth $52bn into the domestic industry, in order to reduce America’s reliance on foreign fabs and support projects like Intel’s Ohio factory.
