“DEI — the identity-obsessed dogma that goes by ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ — has now trained Google’s new AI to refuse to draw white people. What’s even more alarming is that it’s also infected the supply chain that makes the chips powering everything from AI to missiles, endangering national security,” notes an article in The Hill.
DEI requirements contain in the CHIPS Act are thwarting the creation of an advanced microchip industry in the U.S. America invented the semiconductor, but today produces only 10 percent of the world’s supply—and none of the most advanced chips. 90 percent of the world’s advanced microchips are made in Taiwan, which China is preparing to annex by 2027, perhaps as soon as 2025, creating a threat to our national security.
The CHIPS Act gives the Biden administration $39 billion to hand out to subsidize semiconductor manufacturing. But companies that planned to produce more semiconductor chips are busy canceling planned plants to avoid costly “diversity” requirements in the CHIPS Act. Recently,
Intel announced that it’s putting the brakes on its Columbus factory. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has pushed back production at its second Arizona foundry. The remaining major chipmaker, Samsung, just delayed its first Texas fab.
This is not the way companies typically respond to multi-billion-dollar subsidies. So what explains chipmakers’ apparent ingratitude? In large part, frustration with DEI requirements embedded in the CHIPS Act….the CHIPS Act is so loaded with DEI pork that it can’t move.
The law contains 19 sections aimed at helping minority groups…and several prioritizing scientific cooperation with what it calls “minority-serving institutions.” A section called “Opportunity and Inclusion” instructs the Department of Commerce to work with minority-owned businesses and make sure chipmakers “increase the participation of economically disadvantaged individuals in the semiconductor workforce.”…
Handouts abound. There’s plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and people of color, as well as “justice-involved individuals,” more commonly known as ex-cons….[Under the CHIPS Act] the makers of humanity’s most complex technology must rely on local labor and apprentices from all those underrepresented groups, as TSMC discovered to its dismay.
Tired of delays at its first fab, the company flew in 500 employees from Taiwan. This angered local workers, since the implication was that they weren’t skilled enough. With CHIPS grants at risk, TSMC caved in December, agreeing to rely on those workers and invest more in training them. A month later, it postponed its second Arizona fab.
Now TSMC has revealed plans to build a second fab in Japan. Its first, which broke ground in 2021, is about to begin production. TSMC has learned that when the Japanese promise money, they actually give it, and they allow it to use competent workers. TSMC is also sampling Germany’s chip subsidies, as is Intel.
Intel is also building fabs in Poland and Israel, which means it would rather risk Russian aggression and Hamas rockets over dealing with America’s DEI regime….
Chipmakers have figured out that the CHIPS Act creates so many bureaucratic obstacles to building and operating a chip factory that doing so would be prohibitively costly for most of them:
For instance, chipmakers have to make sure they hire plenty of female construction workers, even though less than 10 percent of U.S. construction workers are women. They also have to ensure childcare for the female construction workers and engineers who don’t exist yet. They have to remove degree requirements and set “diverse hiring slate policies,” which sounds like code for quotas. They must create plans to do all this with “close and ongoing coordination with on-the-ground stakeholders.”
No wonder Intel politely postponed its Columbus fab and started planning one in Ireland.
