Pentagon: 269 million US dollars for military chip research

The Pentagon will award 269 million US dollars to 33 semiconductor research projects in the USA. This was reported on Tuesday by the US news agency Bloomberg. The funds come from the Chips and Science Act. The USD 52 billion program, which US President Joseph Biden signed in 2022, is intended to boost the production of semiconductors in the USA. To date, most of these have been manufactured overseas, primarily in Taiwan.

As part of the Chips Act, the US Department of Defense was allocated two billion US dollars over five years for the so-called Microelectronics Commons program. The current million-dollar distribution is the second disbursement of funds to strengthen semiconductor research for the US military. According to David Honey, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, the Microelectronics Commons program is intended to "close an important gap" between prototypes from the lab and those from the factory.

Eight hubs established last year across the country, now involving some 1,200 organizations in 27 states and Washington, D.C., will help carry out the projects announced Tuesday, Bloomberg writes. According to the report, they will focus on technologies ranging from artificial intelligence (AI) to quantum computing.

Government research initiatives

Microelectronics Commons is one of several semiconductor research initiatives launched by the US government last year. As recently as July, the U.S. Department of Commerce, which is responsible for the majority of Chips Act funds, announced a selection process for three new federally funded chip research facilities. Shortly thereafter, the Department of Defense announced its own prototyping initiative, independent of the Chips Act.

Although the departments involved emphasized to Bloomberg the close coordination between the projects, a recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, referenced by the news agency, calls on the US government to improve interagency coordination and avoid duplication. In particular, the researchers point to the four Department of Commerce and Department of Defense programs; the goal should be to create a single national center.

Chips and Science Act

In recent years, semiconductor production has become a national security issue in the USA. Chips are now found in virtually every modern electronic device – from telephones, refrigerators and computers to advanced weapons systems. However, the United States has fallen behind China in chip production in recent years. According to the US daily newspaper Washington Post, 37 percent of the world's chips were manufactured in the USA in 1990, but today the US share of production has fallen to around 12 percent. There are various reasons for this decline, but in Washington it is fueling concerns about the national supply chain for semiconductors.

Against a backdrop of increasing geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty, the US government has therefore launched a subsidy offensive. The trade disputes between the US and China have highlighted the risks of excessive dependence on foreign supply chains. Added to this are the geopolitical tensions surrounding Taiwan and the associated threat to supply chains. With the Chips and Science Act mentioned above, the USA has therefore launched a multi-billion dollar funding program to boost US semiconductor production, from which the Pentagon is also benefiting.

(akn)