Remarks by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks at the 2024 Microelectronics Commons Annual Meeting (As Delivered)

Good morning, everybody. Thank you, Dr. [Dev] Shenoy, first, for the introduction, and thanks to all of you in the defense research and engineering enterprise, for what you do every day to lead us.

It's a privilege to be with all of you for this second annual meeting of the Microelectronics Commons. And it's remarkable to see how much this community has flourished in just the past year.

Now, I won't bother preaching to this choir about why semiconductors matter. Whether you found religion lately or long ago, you're all here because you get it.

Yet even people who can fully grasp how chips enable our phones, fridges, cars, and so much of what's essential to modern life - even scientists and technologists who are steeped in the intricacies of how they're made - even they may not always consider why chips might be so important to the U.S. Department of Defense.

But over at the Pentagon, we think about that all the time. Because microelectronics are fundamental to the operation of virtually every military system: ships, planes, tanks, long-range munitions, communication gear, satellites, sensors, and more.

Every day, from the Indo-Pacific to the North Atlantic to the Middle East and beyond - from the ocean floor to outer space to cyberspace - as American warfighters stand the watch, they depend on chips to help them defend our country, our allies and partners, and our interests.

Microelectronics are at the heart of practically everything you can imagine U.S. troops using. Radios. Radar. Night-vision goggles. GPS. Battle networks. Avionics that enable dagger-shaped stealth bombers to fly. WiFi.

America's vibrant innovation ecosystem made it all possible, through collaboration going back decades across government, academia, and industry, encompassing businesses large and small.

You are the heirs to that legacy. And as our nation has embarked on a quest to reignite U.S. leadership in not only chip research and design, but also prototyping, manufacturing, and production at scale, you are cementing your own legacy.

And you've already done a lot.

One year ago, shortly after we announced the first Microelectronics Commons awards, we had more than 360 distinct member organizations located across 35 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. And we thought that was pretty impressive.

But as of today, the Commons boasts over 1,200 member organizations. Meaning this community has more than tripled in size, in just 12 months. Now that's really impressive. And with that growth, our reach has expanded to even more states, like Arkansas, Maine, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

One year ago, we'd already awarded nearly $240 million to stand up eight regional innovation hubs, reflecting the talent and ingenuity resident all over the country. And that was just the beginning.

Because, as of today, we've awarded nearly $700 million toward this endeavor's goal of bridging the microelectronics gap from lab-to-fab - that infamous valley of death between research and development and production.

Not only does that number include the latest round of nearly three dozen project awards announced just a few weeks ago- it also represents a tripling of our total investment. And there will be more to come.

The CHIPS and Science Act is a "once-in-a-generation investment in America itself," as President Biden said when he signed it into law.

CHIPS was a bipartisan victory for U.S. national security and economic security - a win that will echo through history for years to come.

It proved that we can still do big things, that our best days are still ahead - sparking programs and initiatives across the Biden-Harris Administration, and across the Department of Defense, where we work closely with the Department of Commerce and many other interagency colleagues on CHIPS implementation.

The CHIPS Act made clear to America - and the world - that the U.S. government is united in its commitment to ensuring that our industrial and scientific powerhouses can deliver what we need to secure the future.

And we're united beyond the U.S. government.

Take industry: right now we're living through an era in which a new generation of defense-tech startups and scale-ups is disrupting America's defense industrial base. That's welcomed, because competition is good for the taxpayer and good for the warfighter.

So you might expect to see the newcomers and the mainstays always eying each other warily, contesting whose products are better, and rarely collaborating or finding common cause.

Yet that's not the case with our regional innovation hubs in the Northeast, Midwest, and Southwest. They've given a home to both traditional primes, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX, and newer venture-backed companies, like Anduril, Epirus, and Tignis.

Why? Because chips bring America together.

Or take academia. Right now, in the midst of college football season, fans might expect the likes of Purdue, Notre Dame, Michigan, and Illinois Urbana-Champaign to be at each other's throats well into January.

But at the Silicon Crossroads hub, all four of those universities are benefitting from a trusted environment that's fostering collaborative innovation - creating a unified research and prototyping capability where they're accelerating their unique nanofabrication and test facilities for industry to access.

And you could even say that the Midwest Microelectronics Consortium hub is like the Big Ten Conference, but for semiconductors. (Laughter.) It's now the largest hub with over 360 members nationwide, hailing from every time zone in the continental United States: Pacific, Mountain, Central, and Eastern. There's even one hub member in Hawaii.

Why? Because chips bring America together.

Look no further than the Defense-Ready Electronics and Microdevices Superhub, which recently began processing its first outside customer orders. With the nickname "California DREAMS," it has members from Pasadena, L.A., San Diego, and Santa Barbara - but it also has members from Baltimore, Maryland; Greensboro, North Carolina; and Fort Worth, Texas.

Like I said, chips bring America together. And this work is expanding opportunity as it does so - broadening the number of people and places that support our growing national semiconductor ecosystems, building the workforce pools and talent pipelines that America needs to stay ahead, and bringing new hotbeds of local innovation into the fold.

That's you. You're doing this.

At hubs in Massachusetts and New York, you're helping prepare military veterans for careers in microelectronics.

And you're also reaching talent at historically-black colleges and universities, like Morgan State University and North Carolina A&T, advancing areas like electromagnetic warfare, 5G and 6G wireless, and commercial leap-ahead technologies.

Across the country, this network of hubs now represents a committed community - of innovators, transition owners, academic leaders, defense industry stakeholders, government program managers, and prototyping and manufacturing facilities, that are together accelerating microelectronics development and production - all to meet DoD's needs, and many with dual-use applications.

It's been exciting to see our vision for the Microelectronics Commons become a reality over the last year. And we're looking forward to the progress that we'll see in the years to come: as the hubs continue to evolve their operational models, as new projects get awarded and funded, and as our investments deliver for the warfighter at greater speed and scale.

Together, you exemplify what America can do when we're faced with a pressing challenge.

You're showing the world - and especially our strategic competitors - what we're capable of.

And I know you won't let us down.

Thank you.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.