The News
US Undersecretary of Commerce Laurie Locascio has some advice for the incoming Trump administration on her way out: Don’t stop funding semiconductor research and development.
“I really do hope that they see the value that this will bring to the country,” Locascio told Semafor. “The R&D is so essential to our future, I would say, as a global economic superpower because we have to feed that next American invention.”
She also warned congressional Republicans against cuts to science agencies as they debate trimming the size of government, especially in light of China’s own investments in the sector.
Locascio, a key official implementing 2022’s bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, leaves her position at the helm of the National Institute of Standards and Technology on Friday. She has spearheaded Commerce’s push to spend $11 billion under that law on chip research and development, and she’s feeling confident about the work she’s done despite complaints about the slow pace.
Locascio, who will leave the CHIPS R&D program with Briana Frisone continuing to lead the work, also said she was optimistic about Donald Trump’s administration continuing the work on chips research because “science and technology is not politics.”
The interview excerpt below is edited for length and clarity.
Morgan: What is your advice to the incoming Trump administration as they pick up this work?
Laurie: I don’t know if they’ll want my advice, because everybody has their own way of doing things and I respect that. But I really do hope that they see the value that this will bring to the country. The R&D is so essential to our future, I would say, as a global economic superpower, because we have to feed that next American invention and feed American ingenuity so that we have something that can support our future economy. And I know that’s not a Democrat or Republican or independent thing.
Are you concerned at all about the incoming administration doing anything different or rolling anything back just broadly with respect to the chips program?
I know Congress has always supported it in a bipartisan way, and so I am hopeful that it will continue and that the people who are here who have participated in building out this program who are federal employees will be able to continue to do that.
What do you think is next for Congress to do. Does there need to be a CHIPS and Science Act 2.0? Does there need to be more funding put into R&D specifically?
NIST got a budget cut and so did a lot of the science agencies back in March, and almost simultaneously China increased their research budget by 10%. That juxtaposition of those two things is really a harsh reality to look at. So, I’m hopeful that people will look at that and say, OK, we cannot fall behind our funding for science and technology in the future because if we do, we lose the big game. So, CHIPS 2.0? I think that would be fantastic.
How would you rate the US right now in comparison to China in semiconductor development?
We have been clearly the innovators for a long time. We were the ones that made the original inventions that led to this whole sector and in so many areas, we’re still ahead. In design, we’re way ahead of many others and way ahead of China. I think, though, that it takes investment, right? So if you’re any country in the entire world that wants to be successful in any technology and you invest in it, you’ll be successful eventually.
Do you have any concerns about the financial challenges that a company like Intel is facing, and the effect of those struggles on the success of the overall chips program?
I don’t think that it will have an overall impact on the success of the program. I think this is a sector that does have big ups and downs, and we know that. Over the years, we’ve watched it over and over again, the cycles. We were very prepared for that when we put together the program on the manufacturing incentives side, so we are also prepared on the other side of the awards to work with companies as they have ebbs and flows and make sure that we can think about ways that they might need to restructure, how they’re thinking about the agreements, what we’re doing with them.
The way that we’re tranching out the money allows us to have that kind of flexibility. When they are able to meet the milestones, then that’s when they get the money. If they decide they really need to change because of something that happens in the global marketplace, then we have that flexibility to continue to work with them.