S. 4049

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, as the Senate knows, this week we will complete our work on the 60th National Defense Authorization Act-- actually, 60 years in a row. For decades, this legislation has provided the opportunity for us to take stock of the evolving threat landscape and ensure that our national defense is prepared to meet the challenges on the horizon.

As technological advancements have changed battlefield tactics, each year's NDAA has allowed us to invest in a modernized force and advanced weapons. As risks in cyber space emerged as a new vector for warfare, this legislation has allowed us to invest in resilient networks and a talented workforce.

As the global order has shifted, this annual bill has given us the opportunity to identify the greatest threats to our country and to take strategic action. This year's national defense authorization bill is no exception. It continues to invest in a modernized national defense that is critical to maintaining peace through strength.

That is something we need to remember, which Ronald Reagan taught all of us. Weakness is provocative. Bullies look for opportunities to take advantage of weakness. It is strength in our leadership, particularly with our military, that helps us maintain the peace.

This bill also devotes resources to regain our competitive advantage over our greatest opponents to freedom and democracy today, including China and the Communist Party. In my lifetime, China has gone from a poor and isolated country to now accounting for nearly 20 percent of the global gross domestic product. But China's economic muscle isn't the reason it tops America's watch list. The Chinese Communist Party's ruling strategy can best be described as ``win at all costs,'' and, sadly, the victims of that strategy are often the Chinese people themselves.

On the Senate floor yesterday, I spoke about some of the latest human rights violations by the Communist Party in China--their recent move to erode the freedoms and autonomy of Hong Kong, their efforts to silence and punish protesters who dare to speak out against the Chinese Communist Party, their ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign targeted at the Uighur people.

China continues to demonstrate a complete lack of respect for basic human rights and dignities, and I remain concerned by the growing threat they pose to the world order, including the United States of America.

Attorney General Bill Barr recently gave a speech about the challenges posed by an increasingly powerful, wealthy, and relentless China. It is a great speech, which I commend to you. It provides an impressive overview of how the Communist Party manipulates American businesses and industries, steals intellectual property, surveils and censors its own people, and seeks to exert its power and influence in the United States.

For those who are unfamiliar with the modern relationship between the United States and China and the risks and vulnerability this creates, I highly recommend reading the speech of the Attorney General. In that speech, he discusses the threats posed by the Communist Party's Made in China 2025 initiative, which seeks to achieve Chinese dominance in high-tech manufacturing. For everything from electric cars to advanced robotics, to artificial intelligence, China wants to lead global production.

While this is framed as a way to reduce the dependence on foreign technology and strengthen domestic manufacturing, these ambitions paint an alarming picture for the United States and our allies.

As the Attorney General noted, it is clear that the People's Republic of China seeks not merely to join the ranks of other advanced industrial economies but to replace them altogether.

Before any piece of technology becomes usable for its audience, it includes parts, pieces, and materials that come from, literally, all over the world. Regardless of where that final product is assembled and packaged, each of those individual pieces are the key to protecting the supply chain that creates our most valuable assets.

If the COVID-19 virus taught us anything, it has given us a clear picture of how vulnerable our unsecured supply chains are. We lean heavily on China--too heavily--for things like masks, gloves, gowns, ventilators--all the equipment for which the need was skyrocketing earlier this year.

As a result of the fact that the world was dependent on China to produce this critical equipment, hospitals reached dangerously low levels of personal protective equipment. In the meantime, China refused to disclose to the rest of the world that the virus had indeed broken out in its country so that it could, in fact, hoard the personal protective equipment they knew the rest of the world would need.

As a result of the lack of a secure supply chain, healthcare workers were using a single mask throughout an entire shift, putting both themselves and patients at risk. This has been a wake-up call--or should have been a wake-up call--on supply chain vulnerabilities and a reminder that we need to take action today to secure our supply chains for tomorrow.

One of the biggest of these vulnerabilities we are facing today is a lack of domestic semiconductor manufacturing. These chips are everywhere in almost every product. They are the underlying technology in everything from our cell phones and towers to computers, to precision agriculture, to missile defense systems.

As you can imagine, as technologies have become more sophisticated in recent years, the demand for high-end semiconductors has skyrocketed. In fact, U.S. companies command 47 percent of the global market of these integrated circuit chips. But when it comes to manufacturing, we are falling further and further behind.

Since 2000, the United States has dropped from producing roughly a quarter of the world's semiconductors to only 12 percent, and you need only one guess as to which country stepped up to manufacture these critical devices. You guessed right. It is China.

In the same period, China has gone from manufacturing zero chips to 16 percent of the world's supply and plans on investing another $1.4 trillion in semiconductor technologies.

America has lost ground to our global competitors, and unless we take action, it is estimated that by 2030, 83 percent of the global semiconductor manufacturing capacity will be not here but in Asia.

We need to bring those manufacturing jobs back to the United States and provide end-to-end security in our semiconductor supply chain.

Of course, that is much easier said than done. Building a new foundry, which is where these semiconductors are manufactured, is very expensive and, quite frankly, will not happen without an investment from the Federal Government. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that 21 major semiconductor firms across a number of countries receive more than $50 billion in government support between 2014 and 2018.

Some of these countries investing in manufacturing of these technologies were South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Ireland, Germany, and, you guessed it, China. If we are going to regain lost ground in semiconductor manufacturing and secure one of our most critical supply chains, it is going to take a strategic investment, and that is exactly where the CHIPS for America Act will deliver.

Senator Warner, the distinguished Democratic Senator from Virginia, and I have introduced legislation to restore American leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and ensure long-term national security and economic competitiveness. We worked hand in hand with our colleagues, Senator Cotton from Arkansas and Senator Schumer from New York, in drafting the amendment before the Senate that we will vote on this evening. It is truly a bipartisan product.

It achieves that goal by creating a Federal incentive program through the Department of Commerce to encourage semiconductor manufacturing right here in the good old USA. In short, it would stimulate domestic advanced semiconductor manufacturing and boost both our national security and global competitiveness. It will enable us to bring manufacturing of these critical devices back onto American soil and eliminate this critical national security and economic vulnerability.

As I mentioned, these chips are literally everywhere. Many of you have them in your pockets right now or on your wrists. Semiconductors are the foundational technology for our military systems, our critical infrastructure, our telecommunications, healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing. We want these devices to run on made-in-America semiconductors.

As we conclude our work on the National defense authorization bill, I am glad the Senate has the opportunity to vote on this legislation as an amendment. I am grateful to the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Chairman Inhofe, and Ranking Member Reed for making sure that happens. This legislation supports a critical goal of the National Defense Authorization Act and our national defense strategy, which is strategic competition with China. That is where we are right now.

It prioritizes advancements in the critical technologies that will modernize our national defense and restore our competitive edge, all while allowing us to secure our most critical supply chains.

I hope our colleagues will all join me in supporting this legislation so that we can reclaim American leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, so we can support American jobs, and so we can invest in both a strong national security and our economy. Amendment No. 2244

(Purpose: To restore American leadership in semiconductor manufacturing by increasing federal incentives in order to enable advanced research and development, secure the supply chain, and ensure long-term national security and economic competitiveness.)

Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 2244 and ask that it be read.
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