GF sold its EUV machine several years ago when it decided to stop trying to compete at the leading edge of logic processes.
So, they're not comparable to what TSMC, Intel and Samsung are doing.
They're not in a position to grind out the AI supercomputers of today's excitement. Those aren't the chips I'm worried about from a national security perspective.
It's the microcontrollers and FPGAs controlling weapons systems that really should be made within the country boundaries and that should be completely fine on GF's machinery.
I suppose there are multiple reasons why saving Intel might be important. Making chips used for defence seems the most persuasive one to me.
There's been a continual drive towards better semiconductor processes. That's really important for things like GPU compute. I think we're past diminishing returns for a lot of other things. There's probably a ~14nm arm chip in the keyboard I'm typing on that's only there because it was the cheapest option. Does the ECU in a car benefit from being sub 7nm? Maybe, probably not by much.
The ECU in your car doesn't benefit much from newer processes, but the chips required for self-driving do.
That's the special thing about leading semiconductors: they enable other technologies.
From the personal computer to IoT and AI, all of these were at some point enabled by advances in semiconductor scaling.
You're only focused on what leading edge nodes provide today, but they enable much more than just speculative AI hyperscaling in the long term.
It's the microcontrollers and FPGAs controlling weapons systems that really should be made within the country boundaries and that should be completely fine on GF's machinery.