Yuka Hayashi and Asa Fitch of The Wall Street Journal report that Intel is the leading candidate to receive billions of dollars in government funding for secure facilities producing microchips under the CHIPS Act. They write:
Intel INTC -1.90%decrease; red down pointing triangle is the leading candidate to potentially receive billions of dollars in government funding for secure facilities producing microchips for U.S. military and intelligence applications.
The facilities—which have yet to be disclosed publicly—would be explicitly designated as a “secure enclave,” according to people familiar with the development. The goal is to reduce the U.S. military’s dependence on chips imported from East Asia, particularly Taiwan, which some say is vulnerable to Chinese invasion.
Funded under the Biden administration’s $53 billion Chips Act passed last year, the operation could reside at least in part at Intel’s Arizona factory complex, the people said. […]
The Chips Act aims to boost domestic supply of chips for defense needs and cutting-edge chips to power high-tech consumer and business products. The program allocated $2 billion to the Defense Department to build a national “lab to fab” network for research and development of semiconductor technologies. The department awarded part of that funding for regional programs in September.
Further strengthening defense officials’ role in distributing the Chips Act fund, the Commerce and Defense departments signed an agreement in July to work closely to shore up the domestic “semiconductor defense industrial base.” They agreed to collaborate on “potential investment applications” of their respective Chips Act fund allocations.
Intel has worked with the defense department on several programs, including one known as RAMP-C under which it is developing leading-edge chip manufacturing in partnership with companies such as Boeing, Northrop Grumman and other tech companies such as Nvidia.
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