When Semiconductor Silicon Got a Passport and Discovered Borders Exist

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], December 13: For decades, the semiconductor industry lived by an unspoken rule: efficiency beats resilience. Chips were designed in one country, manufactured in another, packaged somewhere else, and shipped everywhere. It worked beautifully — until it didn’t.

The pandemic, trade wars, and a few strategically inconvenient conflicts did what years of policy papers failed to achieve: they scared governments into action. Suddenly, semiconductors were no longer “components.” They were national assets,…