People in the electronics industry have long known it. Now the U.S. dependence in advanced integrated circuits has become a matter of national concern and the object of federal policy.

National security and economic leadership depend on the U.S. having both design and manufacturing capacity in advanced circuits.

“The ability to produce trusted, reliable microelectronics domestically reduces the risk of supply chain disruptions and sabotage,” said Kelli Wilson, program management executive at systems integrator Amentum. “Reliability and integrity of these microelectronics are vital for national security.”

Chips might be tiny, but they require an extensive supply chain to make, added Amentum’s Alex Maguire, business development executive. Rare earth minerals, metals, packaging components, even the equipment for making chips, must be available to domestic producers. Such companies, aided by Chips Act funds, are trying to restore their capabilities in the most advanced circuits, most of which now are produced overseas, Maguire noted.

“Onshoring is one of the key components to reliability and trust,” Maguire said. He and Wilson said that to support national security, U.S. chip manufacturing must lead on two fronts, the ability to design and produce advanced circuitry, and to produce chips that operate in the harshest environmental situations.

Beyond that, Maguire said, the supply chain includes “the software, the firmware, the algorithms that comprise that system.” Here, too, it’s important to “ensure that we know the provenance of where it started, who was involved, and be able to track that.”

Advanced circuit manufacturing also requires advanced testing capabilities. As chips become denser and multilayered, testing has to keep up.

“With these integrated packages, you’re seeing increases in performance resistivity to heat and thermal conditions, but it makes them more complex as well,” Maguire said. “How do you test them? “Because they’re so stacked, they require higher energy testing that is currently lacking within the United States.”

Chips and people act

Maguire called the CHIPS and Science Act, enacted in August 2022, “a convergence of government and industry investment.” Maguire noted it uses tax breaks and grants “to incentivize companies to invest substantial sums, in the tens of billions, to build these fabs.”

An early benefit, he said, “is that industry is a much better idea of what the government’s demand signals are” for semiconductors.

Still, Maguire and Wilson noted, a high technology industry like integrated circuits requires sufficiently trained people.

Maguire said structures resulting from the Chips Act “like the National Semiconductor Technology Center will help expand capacity in manufacturing, and also help build and sustain the semiconductor workforce.”

Amentum itself employs people with experience in numerous fields, including microelectronics, Wilson said, and uses itself as a platform for two-way mentorship.

“We have our subject matter experts that may have 20 or 30 years in industry that are really helping develop the next generation of workforce,” she said. But the younger people “are also helping mentor their leaders as they have learned the latest and greatest technologies in their education.”

Externally, Wilson said, “Amentum is doing a lot with workforce development. We’re helping our customers with meeting their critical demand.”

She added, “We do that by going out and recruiting talent that they may not have access to. We have a number of subject matter experts that we bring to the table, just years and years of experience in the microelectronics industry.”

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