The Chips act is going to have a huge impact on soft-hardware interfaces going forward. Anyone who can work at the lowest levels of abstraction is going to see opportunities that most others will miss.
I really hope so. There's so much potential for this money to expand the pot hugely.
But there's also so much risk it all gets captured & eaten by the existing titans, that we don't make any gains begetting a new "silicon foundry" where new folks & new ideas get created. There's so much risk that chupmaming remains as rareifiedly arcane, in which case this money doesn't really help the world much.
One of, if not the, first applications of the transistor was in missile guidance. China developed enough vertical integration and global consolidation in the chip industry to become a national security threat. Congress responded by allocating $280 billion to bring the at-risk aspects of design and development back to domestic soil. There is more nuance but that’s the gist.
But there's also so much risk it all gets captured & eaten by the existing titans, that we don't make any gains begetting a new "silicon foundry" where new folks & new ideas get created. There's so much risk that chupmaming remains as rareifiedly arcane, in which case this money doesn't really help the world much.