By Bryan Clark and Dan Patt on March 15, 2021 at 8:35 AM A microchip developed jointly by the Air Force Research Laboratory and American Semiconductor. No modern army could last a minute without microelectronics: no radio, no sensor, no targeting system would function without silicon chips. No civilian economy could function either – just look at what you’re reading this article on. Yet the US has never secured its supply line of the essential microelectronic building block, the semiconductor. That has to change. Recent events continue to underscore semiconductors’ central role in U.S. economic and national security. Carmakers are slowing their assembly lines due to a microprocessor shortage. Export controls on U.S.-built chip manufacturing equipment and design tools helped cut Huawei’s 2020 smart phone sales by 40 percent. And the world’s largest semiconductor supplier, U.S.-based Intel, stumbled in its effort to build the next generation of cutting-edge chips, leading its CEO to step down and the company to seek US government help.