THINGS TO DO

• 1. Join us in Columbus, Ohio on May 22 to talk about the impact of AI in the Silicon Heartland. CCU and Policy Matters Ohio are cohosting the Reimagining the Silicon Heartland Summit. Learn more and register here.
• 2. Join us in Portland, Oregon on June 3-4 to talk about semiconductor production in the Silicon Forest. CCU and Portland Jobs with Justice are co-hosting the Toxic Roots of the Silicon Forest: People, Power, and Pollution in the Semiconductor Industry. Learn more and register here.
• 3. Protect communities from chemical accidents. The EPA is threatening to roll back the 2024 Safer Communities by Chemical Accident Prevention rule, eliminating or weakening provisions designed to prevent dangerous chemical incidents at industrial facilities. This is a threat to workers, first responders, and local communities. You can submit comments on the proposed rule here or here until 11:59pm (ET) on April 10.
• 4. Contribute an article to an upcoming journal. A special issue of NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy will focus on “Semiconductor Manufacturing, Occupational Health, and the Environment.” The editors are soliciting papers presenting scientific findings, case studies, community and worker perspectives, commentary, and policy recommendations on environmental and occupational health hazards and impacts of contemporary semiconductor manufacturing techniques, materials, and/or processes, in one or more locales or countries around the world. Deadline for submitting 150-word abstracts is April 15, 2026. Authors who are invited to participate must submit a completed manuscript by August 31, 2026, with revised manuscripts due January 15, 2027. To learn more, email friends of CCU Michael B. Lax, M.D. (laxm@upstate.edu) or David A. Sonnenfeld, Ph.D. (dsonn@esf.edu).
• 5. Promote smart policy ideas. This resource is designed to support activism around data centers, but we think it could be useful for communities facing new or expanding semiconductor facilities as well. Our friends at AI Now have launched the North Star Data Center Policy Toolkit as an interactive website, with local, state, and federal recommendations to put limits on data center construction—accompanied by an 8-part training series starting April 22 (register for some or all sessions here).
• 6. Join a CCU work group. We hold monthly meetings of the Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health group (email brenda@chipscommunitiesunited.org to learn more) and the Local Action Network group (rand@chipscommunitiesunited.org can tell you more). The Research network meets quarterly (reach out to ngeiser@cwa-union.org to participate).
• 7. Follow us on social media. This link will allow you to find all our social media channels. Please like and follow!
• 8. Check out CCU at an upcoming conference. This spring, CCU staff and leaders will be at Take Back Tech, Labor Research and Action Network, the Jobs with Justice National Conference, Healthy Waters Annual Meeting, the National PFAS Conference, and Labor Notes. (In fact, we’ll be hosting panels at some of these events.) Please reach out and say hi. We’ll give you stickers!

THINGS TO KNOW

• 1. Concerned residents of New York state (led by Jobs to Move America) have launched a community benefits coalition to make sure the new Micron fab in Clay supports workers, neighbors, and the local environment. Check out their excellent new website! And while you’re at it, take a look at the great website describing Micron’s threat to public health through the use of the toxic “forever chemicals” PFAS. Speaking of Micron, here’s an article on the history of the company, featuring a dentist’s office and potatoes.
• 2. Is Intel bouncing back? Intel just repurchased equity in its Ireland fab — shares the company sold in 2024.
• 3. Elon Musk is building two chip fabs in Texas to make chips for Tesla vehicles, humanoid robots, and AI satellites.
• 4. You may recall that Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick clawed back money appropriated for semiconductor research and development, housed in a public-private vehicle called Natcast. Here’s more. “Beyond Natcast’s discontinuation (and the apparent termination of the NSTC itself), the Industrial Advisory Committee has been disbanded, the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program is not active, the new semiconductor-focused Manufacturing USA Institute has been discontinued, and the Consortium Steering Committee has not met since the change of administration. As these activities are mandated by the CHIPS Act, it is not clear how Commerce intends to comply with the Act without substantially increasing staff — at odds with the administration’s push for smaller government. From the outside, the new CHIPS R&D vision appears more like a profit-driven investment program than a provider of core infrastructure benefiting all participants and prioritizing American national and economic security.”
• 5. A bipartisan bill has been introduced in Congress to help communities remove PFAS and other pollutants from wastewater.
• 6. A few months ago we reported on a recent CHIPS and Science Act investment in Vulcan Technologies, which processes rare earth minerals. Now it turns out to be associated with Donald J. Trump Jr: “President’s son invested in a 30-person startup. Three months later, his father’s Pentagon promised them $620 million.”
• 7. Every US president for decades has vowed to restore manufacturing jobs in the US. Harvard economist Jason Furman maintains that it never works. (Another writer argues that maybe Trump’s tariffs have begun to reverse the decades-long decline.)
• 8. CCU supports industrial policy, despite our frustration with the way the CHIPS Act has been implemented. We believe the public sector can use its resources, procurement, trade policy, and other levers to shape markets for the public good. To that end, check out this list of industrial policy tools from our friends Ian Fletcher and Marc Fasteau.
• 9. As regular readers know, the AI boom has led to a massive boom for memory chips. Now analysts are warning that demand is driving up prices and squeezing available inventory, which could lead to shortages in the chips needed for phones, cars, computers, and appliances. Or at the very least, it will make everything more expensive, with spot prices up nearly 700% for some items in the past year.
• 10. Our old friend Gina Raimondo, who was Commerce Secretary under Biden, is warning about the threat AI poses to jobs. Unsurprisingly, she thinks the solution is “businesses taking the lead and providing real-time, AI-powered insights into hiring plans, technology adoption and skill needs.”
• 11. What should we do if/when the AI bubble bursts? In the realm of speculative non-fiction, the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator just put out a great report on policies for Congress to consider after an AI-induced financial crash. Here’s the paper, a summary on their Subtack, and an op-ed in Time magazine.
• 12. War in Iran could interfere with chip production across the world. At a broad level, “[w]hat makes this conflict different is not its intensity, but its integration,” says an article in Tech Policy Press. “Every kinetic strike now has a digital shadow… The conflict has exposed just how vulnerable this system is.” The closing of the Strait of Hormuz represents a blockage in one of the global economy’s many chokepoints. Specifically, the war is interfering with the supply of helium, which turns out to be critical to chip production. Taiwan’s chip production is also in jeopardy, warns Politico. “Iran’s blockage of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off Taiwan from Qatari exporters, which provide more than one-third of its total liquefied natural gas. Taiwan’s grid relies on LNG for up to 40 percent of its power generation, and its overdependence on Qatar makes it even more vulnerable to Persian Gulf supply shocks… Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company — which produces around 90 percent of the world’s most advanced chips — consumes around nine percent of the island’s total electricity output… Prolonged paralysis of the strait may force Taipei to choose between rationing power to consumers and public services or reducing electricity to its valuable industrial sector, including TSMC.” And Taiwan isn’t the only country feeling the pain: one analyst argues that no noncombatant country has been hit harder by the war than South Korea.
• 13. California has Silicon Valley. Oregon has the Silicon Forest. Arizona has the Silicon Desert. Ohio has the Silicon Heartland. And (I learned recently), Germany has Silicon Saxony, where TSMC is building a factory.