Micron planned to invest approximately $200 billion in research and development and manufacturing in the US. This coming amid the nation's broad efforts to onshore semiconductor manufacturing. Here with more on the state of the chip sector, let's get to Christopher Miller, Tufts University professor and author of the book, Chip War. Chris, it is good to see you as always. Your timing today, Chris, impeccable because we have a story right in your wheelhouse with Micron planning to invest more than $200 billion in semiconductor manufacturing here in the US. I was reading, Chris, um creating roughly 90,000 jobs, direct and indirect. Of course, this is this is music to the president's ears, right, Chris? This is this is what Trump Trump says he wants. He wants more domestic chip manufacturing. I I'm curious, Chris, what do you make of that Micron headline, that Micron news? What was your response?

Well, I think Micron's been signaling for some time that it's planning to build new facilities in the United States. This actually dates back now a number of years since the passage of the Chips Act in the first Trump administration all the way through the Biden years. Micron's been developing plants in a couple of different locations across the US. And so I think this new announcement is just a continuation of this trend of chip makers both from the US and other companies planning to build more capacity in the United States.

I'm curious because we have seen these companies making these kind of these big splash announcements, right? How dependent though, Chris, do we remain right now um on sourcing chips from Taiwan, from Korea, and how do you see that evolving, Chris, over the next 5, 10 years?

You know, I think for all these companies making announcements about their plans to invest in the US, the big question is what's the demand going to be. Uh will there be customers that are looking to buy these chips? And so for all these companies, not just Micron, but the entire industry, they're going to really carefully calibrate their capital investment based on what demand looks like. And so it's one thing to issue a plan right now, but that could change up or down based on where demand is. Right now, the US is still tremendously reliant on chips imported from other countries in Taiwan and South Korea being really critical players. That's true for data centers, true for smartphones, true for pretty much any application. And that's because the chip industry is highly globally integrated with Asian countries, as well as Europe, playing an important role in the chip industry alongside the US.

You know, Chris, I want to switch gears. I want to talk about export controls as well because we had Trump come out and say, listen, we have this new effort in place, this new framework with China to get those negotiation negotiations back on track. It sounded, Chris, like the curbs placed and related to advanced chips, those remain in place. Our commerce chief, Howard Lutnick, telling media, it's very clear we are competing with China in the AI race. Howard Lutnick said, we are just not going to give them our best chips and of course, they want them. What do you make of that, Chris?

Well, I think the commerce secretary has been pretty clear that he wants to enforce relatively tough export controls on the sale of AI chips to China. The trade negotiations haven't changed that. And he's been public over the past couple of weeks and also pointing out the real challenges China faces in trying to build up its own domestic chip making capabilities. It's still pretty far behind the US when it comes to capacity of the ability to produce AI chips. And so long as China can't produce enough AI chips at home, it's going to be relying on whatever chips the US is willing to sell them.

And so so are these export controls, Chris, are they effective ultimately in your opinion here at slowing down China's chip sector and slowing down their own domestic chip ambitions?

Well, the controls on the sale of chip making equipment to China have definitely been effective. That's the reason that companies like Huawei can't produce enough chips for themselves domestically. The controls on the sale of AI accelerators to China have also been a real challenge for China's AI firms. If you listen, for example, to the leadership of DeepSeek, what they've said repeatedly in public is their number one challenge is accessing the quantity of AI chips that they need to train and then to deploy AI systems. And so if your goal is to create problems, cause dilemmas, create delays for Chinese tech companies, the export controls are certainly doing that and that's what Chinese tech leaders are saying.

Chris, always great to see you and have you on the show. Thank you.

Thanks for having me.