Remember the global shortage of silicon chips six years ago, and how that threatened to derail a resurgent economy? The covid pandemic was receding, and pent-up demand came rolling in. But supply chain disruptions and pandemic restrictions meant that there just weren’t enough chips to go around.

That’s when manufacturers – particularly in the US – realized that every industry relied on semiconductor chips to function. And getting almost all your chips from Asia was a risky strategy. Everything from cars to blenders to thermostats, and every business from retail to banking to farming depends on microprocessors and smart systems.

And that’s not even counting the need for high-end processing units for machine learning, robotics, biometrics, scientific research, and crypto mining. All of which are dwarfed by faster and more powerful phones and laptops. We might not all be living in the metaverse yet, but being connected on digital platforms is an essential part of life – and work – as we know it.

The global demand for chips is now approaching US$ 900 billion, and the good news is that companies like Nvidia Corp. have risen to the challenge, producing cutting-edge graphics processing units (GPUs) for everything from image recognition to fraud detection. Nvidia now ranks as the sixth largest US company, having overtaken Meta Platforms and Berkshire Hathaway in 2022.

Together with AMD, Intel, IBM, and the other tech giants, they have rescued the American Dream from Chinese competition and inflationary cycles. Tech is king, and the United States is – still – the king of tech.