The Chinese Motherboard Hack Is a Crisis, Even If It Didn’t Really Happen
It’s easy to forget in the app era, but Silicon Valley got its name from microchips. The generation that transformed orchards into Oracle did so by manufacturing electronic circuits that encrust “chips” of a semiconductor material, usually made of silicon. In the fertile purlicue south of San Francisco, the foundations of the electronic revolution were invented, designed, and manufactured. Shockley Semiconductor, Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, and other integrated-circuit makers thrived. Computer makers who used their parts burgeoned too. Software and services came next, and then the venture capital to fund these efforts.
Today, the capital and the software remain, and some computer and device makers, too. But the integrated circuit business has largely the region. Silicon is etched into Silicon Valley mostly in name. The reasons are . Land, housing, and labor became more expensive. Other countries,
