John Cornyn: “over the past few decades, the United States has experienced a steady drop in domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Now…”

“over the past few decades, the United States has experienced a steady drop in domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Now, I guess we all might be forgiven for not being experts in what advanced microcircuits are all about, but the truth is these microcircuits, or semiconductors, are part of our everyday lives in ways that perhaps we don't fully appreciate. Everything from your smartphone to the most advanced weapons that we are providing to Ukraine to defeat Russian aggression, to the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35--all of these require a large number of these mini-circuit processors, or semiconductors. Well, over these last few decades, we have gone from producing 37 percent of the world's chips in 1990 to just 12 percent today. In other words, we are more dependent than ever on supply chains of semiconductors in order to keep our economy going and to defend ourselves from a national security perspective. This, obviously, is a concerning trend, and one of the things we have learned about during COVID is this idea of globalization, that just because somebody can make something cheaper--in China, let's say--than in the United States, that that answered all the questions, that that checked all the boxes. Well, you might say the same thing about Europe's dependency on Russian oil and gas when, once Mr. Putin decided to invade Ukraine, they realized they were the captive of the Russian Federation when it came to their basic energy needs.…”