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Comment by throw0101a | Hacker News Reader

Well the revival may be halted depending on the election:

> The US CHIPS and Science Act's future may depend on the outcome of Tuesday's Presidential Election after House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested the GOP would likely move to repeal the $280 billion funding bill if the party wins a majority in Congress.

* https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/04/chips_act_repeal/

but a little while later:

> Johnson, who voted against the legislation, later said in a statement that the CHIPS Act, which poured $54 billion into the semiconductor manufacturing industry, “is not on the agenda for repeal.”

* https://apnews.com/article/mike-johnson-chips-act-d5504f76d3...

so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Micron is a defense critical company. They're getting their new fab no matter what because China can more readily target Boise.

What makes Boise a more readily available target for China?

Their medium range ICBMs, which they have greater inventory of, can reach the northwest.

Sorry, what decision are you saying is being made because China can nuke Boise more easily than other places? Are you envisioning a limited tactical strike by China that bombs half the country but leaves the Eastern seaboard militarily relevant?

If you have a limited number of long range ICBMs then you will likely prefer more directly military targets rather than a manufacturing facility which would likely only start to matter for a conflict months into combat, which itself is a scenario (drawn out conventional war) that is likely precluded by exchange of nuclear weapons in the first place.

> If you have a limited number of long range ICBMs

China has hundreds going on thousands of ICBMs. Nobody is creating redundancy from Boise to Albany and Sunnyvale to increase survivability in case of a nuclear exchange between America and China.

> Nobody is creating redundancy from Boise to Albany and Sunnyvale to increase survivability in case of a nuclear exchange between America and China.

Uh, lol?

FUD!.The total including SLBM is 442.

https://thebulletin.org/premium/2024-01/chinese-nuclear-weap...

Ooh if we go first we'd barely get our hair mussed!

> FUD!.The total including SLBM is 442

Sorry, I should have said hundreds going on a thousand. Glad we put that fab in Sunnyvale!

(442 is hundreds. Your own source says the "Pentagon also estimates that China’s arsenal will increase to about 1,000 warheads by 2030, many of which will probably be 'deployed at higher readiness levels' and most 'fielded on systems capable of ranging the [continental United States]'." By 2035 that could grow up to 1,500. These are MAD figures.)

You realize if China is launching ICBMs on US cities we are simultaneously deploying nuclear weapons against China and it’s the end of the world… right?

My understanding is that Micron only does R&D in Boise, they don't run any production manufacturing there.

They are building a new fab in Boise to return production to the US. That's in addition to the new fab in Syracuse. Any guesses why they need two new facilities in the mainland US when the bulk of their output is just going to be shipped to SEA? DRAM is a fully commoditized, low margin product. Kryptonite to MBAs, but someone convinced them to make the move to reverse their successful offshoring with a lot of promised benefits.

DRAM is expensive enough per kilogram that most of it has been shipped by air for decades.

> Well the revival may be halted depending on the election

Not a fan of the GOP, but industry is operating on the assumption that most industrial policies under the Biden admin will continue to remain.

There's been a lot of policy research and lobbying on this front for over a year at this point [0]

Doesn't hurt that a number of major Trump-Vance donors have benefited from these industrial policies as well.

Sadly, most deal flow is anyhow locked up because the Commerce has been slow at disbursing funds due to bipartisan politicking (eg. GOP trying to undermine the CHIPS act due to pettiness, CPC affiliates trying to launch unnecessary NEPA and Labor fights)

That said, even companies knew that would happen - and a lot of deal flow was strategically placed in purple districts for that reason.

Foreign automakers and their supppliers used a similar strategy in the 1990s-2000s when entering the US market by opening factories in then-Purple Tennessee, Kentucky, WV, etc.

[0] - https://www.eiu.com/n/us-election-its-impact-on-industrial-p...

Which CPC affiliates?

Pramila Jayapal most notably.

Donald Norcross in the Labor Caucus has been a major blocker as well because most of these CHIPS projects are being built independent of AFL-CIO in a lot of cases.

According to Mark Warner Elon Musk should be on this list as well.

Elon Musk didn't have a say in disbursement - congressmembers do.

I would trust his first statement more than his second. He only backed off after he faced criticism that could affect the congressman's election. The CHIPS act is a huge Biden policy win so you can bet the GOP will want to repeal it.

Here was his statement:

https://youtu.be/hzwQXL77VVA?t=64

My hunch is something like NAFTA -> USMCA would happen with CHIPS. Repeal and replace with basically the same to make it look like a GOP win.

Here's what he said about it last month when interviewed by Joe Rogan:

> We put up billions of dollars for rich companies to come in and borrow the money and build chip companies here, and they’re not going to give us the good companies anyway.

and

> When I see us paying a lot of money to have people build chips, that’s not the way. You didn’t have to put up 10 cents, you could have done it with a series of tariffs. In other words, you tariff it so high that they will come and build their chip companies for nothing.

That really doesn't sound like it is something he'd just do some minor tweaks to and change the name like he did with NAFTA.

If he does go through with the large tariff approach, something to keep in mind is that usually when you impose tariffs on imports there are retaliatory tariffs imposed on your exports. The US chip making industry makes 82% of its sales from exports.

Most of the factories are being built in Republican areas, so I'd be really surprised if they actually got rid of it. The rebranding seems more likely to me, but then the GOP have surprised me a lot in the last decade.

I wouldn't be too worried.

Sen. Bill Hagerty is in the running for Commerce Secretary (Commerce is the department that runs the CHIPS Act), and he crossed the aisle on a number of semiconductor related legislation.

> The CHIPS act is a huge Biden policy win

I'm a huge fan of the CHIPS Act, but most Americans have not heard of it [0].

That lack of noteriety is what protects it.

Doesn't hurt that most deal flow is in purple districts, so most shit-slingers tend to be far removed and shut up pretty quickly after a quick rebuke from Party Chairs about how close the election is.

[0] - https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000018f-3fe4-dc61-adff-7fe53...

Protects it? I think it makes it even more of a ripe target since nobody's heard of it and won't get up in arms about something they've not heard of. It's a low cost in political capital for them to undo it. Plus, if nobody has heard of it, they can definitely claim it as something they created and claim the victory in their echo chambers

It's too niche to be a wedge issue nationally, but most investment is primarily in purple districts which makes it dangerous for either party to oppose it without having a downstream impact in donations and even a primary challenge in 2 years.

Same reason why Brandon Williams quickly shut up Mike Johnson even though Mike Johnson could make his life in the GOP and the House hell (not all offices in the CBO have air conditioning despite hellish humidity) - he'd rather keep his seat (NY-22) even if it meant undermining his boss.

>The CHIPS act is a huge Biden policy win so you can bet the GOP will want to repeal it.

It does seem like politics at the presidency now is less about what you'll do and more about undoing everything the other side did during their time in office, regardless of utility or popularity of what it is.

Is it me or is this worse now? Had it always been like that and I'm just now seeing it?

Everything is worse now.

It is mostly that way for the GOP since the Newt Gingrich era.

Not that the Dems don't undo things... But they add to policy as well.

GOP does culture war, tear stuff down mostly.

Partisan scare tactics? Which outcome would result in loss?

Wasn't it Trump who popularized the pullback of Chip manufacturing to the US for security ad prosperity reasons.

Trump's tariffs were aimed at a lot of goods, but not chips. The push and subsequent law to get chip manufacturing back into the US was entirely a Biden project.

> Wasn't it Trump who popularized the pullback of Chip manufacturing to the US for security ad prosperity reasons.

And how's that Foxconn factory going?

* https://www.reuters.com/business/foxconn-sharply-scales-back...

In the end they created jobs and invested money, but both were less than expected. The subsidies were also contingent on performance, and negotiated down, so Foxconn didn’t the original amount. This also seems like purely a deal between the state and Foxconn, so it’s interesting it became so prominent, as if it were contingent on control of the White House.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2023/03/23/wha...

Nah, it wasn't him.

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