DEI killed the CHIPS Act

DEI — the identity-obsessed dogma that goes by “diversity, equity, and 
inclusion” — has now trained Google’s new AI to refuse to draw white 
people. What’s even more alarming is that it’s also infected the supply 
chain that makes the chips powering everything from AI to missiles, 
endangering national security.

The Biden administration recently promised it will finally loosen the 
purse strings on $39 billion of CHIPS Act grants to encourage 
semiconductor fabrication in the U.S. But less than a week later, Intel 
announced that it’s putting the brakes on its Columbus factory. The Taiwan 
Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has pushed back production at 
its second Arizona foundry. The remaining major chipmaker, Samsung, just 
delayed its first Texas fab.

This is not the way companies typically respond to multi-billion-dollar 
subsidies. So what explains chipmakers’ apparent ingratitude? In large 
part, frustration with DEI requirements embedded in the CHIPS Act.

Commentators have noted that CHIPS and Science Act money has been 
sluggish. What they haven’t noticed is that it’s because the CHIPS Act is 
so loaded with DEI pork that it can’t move.

The law contains 19 sections aimed at helping minority groups, including 
one creating a Chief Diversity Officer at the National Science Foundation, 
and several prioritizing scientific cooperation with what it calls 
“minority-serving institutions.” A section called “Opportunity and 
Inclusion” instructs the Department of Commerce to work with minority-
owned businesses and make sure chipmakers “increase the participation of 
economically disadvantaged individuals in the semiconductor workforce.”

The department interprets that as license to diversify. Its factsheet 
asserts that diversity is “critical to strengthening the U.S. 
semiconductor ecosystem,” adding, “Critically, this must include 
significant investments to create opportunities for Americans from 
historically underserved communities.”

The department does not call speed critical, even though the impetus for 
the CHIPS Act is that 90 percent of the world’s advanced microchips are 
made in Taiwan, which China is preparing to annex by 2027, maybe even 
2025.

Handouts abound. There’s plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers 
submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and 
people of color, as well as “justice-involved individuals,” more commonly 
known as ex-cons. There’s plenty for the right—veterans and members of 
rural communities find their way into the typical DEI definition of 
minorities. There’s even plenty for the planet: Arizona Democrats just 
bragged they’ve won $15 million in CHIPS funding for an ASU project 
fighting climate change.

That project is going better for Arizona than the actual chips part of the 
CHIPS Act. Because equity is so critical, the makers of humanity’s most 
complex technology must rely on local labor and apprentices from all those 
underrepresented groups, as TSMC discovered to its dismay.

Tired of delays at its first fab, the company flew in 500 employees from 
Taiwan. This angered local workers, since the implication was that they 
weren’t skilled enough. With CHIPS grants at risk, TSMC caved in December, 
agreeing to rely on those workers and invest more in training them. A 
month later, it postponed its second Arizona fab.

Now TSMC has revealed plans to build a second fab in Japan. Its first, 
which broke ground in 2021, is about to begin production. TSMC has learned 
that when the Japanese promise money, they actually give it, and they 
allow it to use competent workers. TSMC is also sampling Germany’s chip 
subsidies, as is Intel.

Intel is also building fabs in Poland and Israel, which means it would 
rather risk Russian aggression and Hamas rockets over dealing with 
America’s DEI regime. Samsung is pivoting toward making its South Korean 
homeland the semiconductor superpower after Taiwan falls.

In short, the world’s best chipmakers are tired of being pawns in the 
CHIPS Act’s political games. They’ve quietly given up on America. Intel 
must know the coming grants are election-year stunts — mere statements of 
intent that will not be followed up. Even after due diligence and final 
agreements, the funds will only be released in dribs and drabs as 
recipients prove they’re jumping through the appropriate hoops.

For instance, chipmakers have to make sure they hire plenty of female 
construction workers, even though less than 10 percent of U.S. 
construction workers are women. They also have to ensure childcare for the 
female construction workers and engineers who don’t exist yet. They have 
to remove degree requirements and set “diverse hiring slate policies,” 
which sounds like code for quotas. They must create plans to do all this 
with “close and ongoing coordination with on-the-ground stakeholders.”

No wonder Intel politely postponed its Columbus fab and started planning 
one in Ireland. Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was launching 
a CHIPS-funded training program for historically black colleges.

Now the secretary is calling for a second CHIPS Act. Before that, let’s 
make the one we have usable. There’s an easy fix. A bipartisan group of 
lawmakers is already trying to pass a bill exempting CHIPS funding from 
the multiyear environmental review required by the National Environmental 
Policy Act. The same need for speed calls for adding in a veto of the 
Commerce Department’s diversity tag-alongs. All Congress has to do is 
insist it meant what it said in the CHIPS Act and no more: giving poor 
people opportunities isn’t a free pass to enact all of DEI’s pet causes, 
and especially not to make national security wait on them. What Congress 
didn’t give, Congress should be willing to take away.

This is the stuff declining empires are made of. As America pursues 
national security by building a diverse workforce, China does it by 
building warships.


The CHIPS Act’s current identity as a jobs program for favored minorities 
means companies are forced to recruit heavily from every population except 
white and Asian men already trained in the field. It’s like fishing in all 
the places you aren’t getting bites.

Instead of solving the problem, the people in charge are trying to cover 
the problem up just long enough to win reelection. Don’t be fooled by the 
Biden administration’s upcoming weekend-at-Bernie’s act — the CHIPS Act is 
dead.

https://thehill.com/opinion/4517470-dei-killed-the-chips-act/