This is a huge hurdle. There is actually some chip/silicon fab sites that never left (only scaled down considerably from their peak). A family member has worked at one for many years as an engineer/manager. When he tells me stories about the insane complexity of their process engineering it really hits home. Impurities at the nanometer scale can ruin 10 million dollar batches of silicon. Nasty chemicals are piped everywhere at the plant - the kind that explode if touching oxygen in the atmosphere or acids that dissolve bone before they noticeably affect your skin.

Running such a production is difficult.