3 steps to safeguard our national security supply chain

[rangerrebew]

3 steps to safeguard our national security supply chain
By Daniel N. Hoffman, opinion contributor — 09/23/20 04:00 PM EDT
 

The Defense Department's undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, Ellen Lord, last month emphasized the importance of transferring microelectronic production to the U.S. The Pentagon needs to exercise greater command-and-control over its acquisition of microelectronic technology, which is the foundation for 21st-century fast, disruptive technology such as “Big Data,” artificial intelligence, quantum computing and 5G wireless.

Bringing the supply chain to the U.S., which the Pentagon refers to as “reshoring,” would be a major step toward protecting the security of microelectronics from nefarious adversaries like China.

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/517732-3-steps-to-safeguard-our-national-security-supply-chain

[PeteS in CA]

Hypothetically, this is worthwhile. However, in the real world, defense electronics is a small fraction of consumer electronics, and even in the Wonderful World of COTS, producing mil-qualified parts is a royal PITA (and space-qualified is even crazier!). So the incentive for an Intel or TI or On Semi or etc. to bring their fab and packaging back on-shore is not very great, and arm-twisting would likely backfire.