By Mike Dodd, USMC (Ret.)
Legal agreements don’t usually cause much fanfare. Inter-governmental pacts are even less newsworthy. So, I’m going to give you a pass if you missed the Memorandum of Agreement signed last month between the Department of Defense and Department of Commerce.
That said, it’s kind of a big deal. A really big deal if you, like me, want to see the United States succeed in re-shoring microelectronics manufacturing.
The MOA broadly creates alignment between the DoD and DoC and opens lines of communication to ensure effective and streamlined spending of the billions being invested in re-shoring trusted microelectronics manufacturing,
"This agreement will enable our teams to coordinate the national security review of applications, produce semiconductor chips in America that our military relies on, and bolster our domestic supply chain resiliency." Said CHIPS Program Office Director Michael Schmidt, who signed the MOA on behalf of the Department of Commerce.
That means the DoD will share with the DoC the microelectronics needs of our Defense Industrial Base to reduce duplication of awards. Additionally, The DoC will be privy to the semiconductor needs of DoD as a whole, and each military service branch, to ensure funding is prioritized to the greatest need.
My friend and fellow Marine, Senator Todd Young, co-author of the CHIPS and Science Act, knew long ago that we need to pull out all the stops to outpace our adversaries. “We have a national security imperative to ensure we don’t fall behind China in technological innovation…”, said Sen. Young after CHIPS and Science was signed into law.
It's a commonsense approach. We need to over-communicate to get this right. And it reminds me of the old adage, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” We’re in this together and we need to work effectively as a team to never (ever) fight a fair fight.
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