The US is investing heavily in microelectronics. (Photo by Rudolfs Klintsons via Pexels)
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon today announced the first set of awards under the CHIPS Act totaling $240 million to build eight regional innovation hubs through its Microelectronics Commons initiative— one day after the US Secretary of Commerce warned that any progress being made would “come to a grinding halt” under a government shutdown.
“Each hub will receive between $15 million and $40 million dollars, depending on their needs and the existing resources they’ll leverage,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said today. “They’ll focus on areas like electromagnetic warfare, secure computing at the tactical edge and the internet of things, AI hardware, 5G and 6G wireless, quantum, and other leap-ahead technologies — all to meet DoD’s needs, and many with dual-use applications.”
The hubs to be launched: a Northeast Regional Defense Tech Hub in New York; a Southwest Advanced Prototyping Hub in Arizona; a Commercial Leap Ahead for Wide-bandgap Semiconductors Hub in North Carolina; a Silicon Crossroads Microelectronics Commons Hub in Indiana; a 65-member hub in Ohio launched by the Midwest Microelectronics Consortium; a California Defense Ready Electronics and Microdevices Superhub in southern California; a Northeast Microelectronics Coalition Hub launched by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative; and a California-Pacific-Northwest AI Hardware Hub in northern California.
In all, the Microelectronics Commons — born out of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 — aims to facilitate a “robust pipeline” to deliver “new, world-leading microelectronics,” a senior defense official told reporters on Tuesday ahead of the award announcement. The CHIPS Act allocated approximately $2 million for DoD microelectronics production, and the Microelectronics Commons is “postured to exploit and build on those investments,” the official added.
Today, Hicks said the Microelectronics Commons initiative “will get the most cutting-edge microchips into systems our troops use every day: ships, planes, tanks, long-range munitions, communications gear, sensors, and much more… including the kinds of all-domain, attritable autonomous systems that we’ll be fielding through DoD’s recently-announced Replicator initiative.”
Hicks added that the department received 83 proposals for potential hubs since last December and gathered over 50 experts from DoD and the departments of commerce, state and energy to deliberate the awards. She added that the Microelectronics Commons will focus on accelerating “lab-to-fab” transition.
“Because while America is a world leader in the innovative research and design of microelectronics, we’ve lagged in the ability to prototype, manufacture, and produce them at scale,” she said. “That’s what the CHIPS Act is meant to supercharge.”
Prior to the CHIPS Act, the US under-invested in US-based microelectronics production, resulting in a reliance on manufacturers overseas. As of today, the US relies on East Asia for about 75 percent of chip production, the defense official told reporters. Now, with the first set of awards made to the eight tech hubs, the intent is to start projects that are “ready to go” while also preparing to bring new projects into them over the next five years. A call for more projects is anticipated in the fall, the official added.
“From the initial project proposals that were included in the successful hub proposals, there was a mix of near-term focus and slightly longer term, but it was an indication to us that people really got it,” the official said. “So in the areas of work at the hubs, the areas of expertise they’re developing, or already have and are developing, are very much focused on the challenges that we have in the department.”
Hicks said today that DoD will host its first Microelectronics Commons annual meeting next month where officials will hear directly from the tech hubs and she reiterated that today’s awards are just one piece of the CHIPS Act.
But while DoD’s announcement today signifies a key step to microelectronic independence, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Tuesday warned that progress, particularly on upcoming announcements to be made in the fall, would “come to a grinding halt” if the government shuts down, as is lookingincreasingly likely.
“It would be crushing,” Raimondo said during a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing. “When I talk to members of Congress, they say, ‘How come we’re not moving faster on CHIPS?’… If there’s a shutdown, it’ll come to a grinding halt.
“I mean, there is no question in my mind that a shutdown will hurt America’s national security, at least as it relates to my work, export control enforcement, export control work, investment of the CHIPS money, investment of the tech hub money — it all stops and every dollar and every day that we aren’t working, you know, puts us greater at risk,” she added.
