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Do you?
What allies do you have that produce electronics on the scale that is required? ST doesn't have the capacity. It's pretty much just Chinese foundries and TSMC.
Besides. Alliances are always temporary.
TSMC has fabs in the US now?
I don't think military tech uses latest-generation chips.
This isn't an area I have much knowledge in though.
Tell me you've never worked in the semiconductor industry without telling me you've never worked in the semiconductor industry.
You don't understand the level of investment and richness required in your industrial base to get any exploitable scale. The CHIPS act investments may yield something that might be relevant in like ten years. If the US is lucky. And yes this holds true even if you know what you're doing to the frankly impressive level TSMC does. It really is that hard.
Starting a fab, despite costing dizzying amounts of money, means nothing. Europe has a couple, and they don't even begin to cover the needs of a single of their domestic industries. Let alone something as complex as procurement for a whole military.
Toasters or shoes you could more easily relocate as long as you had cost effective labor or machines. But for semiconductors you have to multiply that by a whole lot of very specific disciplines, unique, expensive and rare machines, large scale infrastructure requirements and a general uncertainty that the endeavour will be profitable at all that can last decades.
No need for the 'without', I did say that.
Most of the manufacturing needed for defense isn't chips though. And the chips point goes both ways - if it's that hard to relocate, tariffs aren't going to do it either
Quite. But what about all those other things you need production capacity for in your military? Which is what we were originally talking about.
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