THE U.S., WHERE computer chips were invented, hasn’t manufactured leading-edge chips since 2017. From then until now, the world’s fastest, most valuable chips, the kind that power OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Apple’s newest iPhones, and the world’s biggest super computers, have been made only in Taiwan and South Korea. But sometime next year, if all goes as planned, the U.S. will reclaim global leadership when Intel starts producing in volume a next-generation chip in the U.S. The chip technology, which Microsoft has already committed to use as the foundation for Intel-made proprietary chips, probably won’t be fully matched elsewhere for at least many months.
The dramatic turnaround owes much to the CHIPS and Science Act, which was signed into law in 2022 to revive semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. Some $52 billion in grants is being disbursed to companies,
