In chips we trust? Remembering the Environmental Impacts of Hardware Manufacturing

Executive Summary

With the passing of the US CHIPS and Science Act in 2022, semiconductor fabrication plants became the focus of intense political and business attention, delivering a bipartisan infrastructure investment worth approximately $52 billion. This essay argues that patriotism and pioneer mythology, mobilized by figures such as Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, drove support for domestic manufacturing while obscuring the industry's severe ecological costs. Publicity events like Intel's 1000-acre facility in Licking County, Ohio, celebrated jobs and national security, yet regulators granted Intel an air quality permit even though the company underreported its carbon dioxide emissions by 38% in 2022, and a contract employee sued over alleged chemical exposure at its Oregon build.

Gregg situates today's rhetoric against the advocacy heritage of Silicon Valley, where activists, scholars and labor organizers documented contamination, hazardous waste, and the human harms of chemicals such as TCE, TCA and PFAS. Chip production depends on chemicals, metals, sand and a staggering amount of water, straining already-parched regions like Arizona and shifting ecological stewardship from communities to multinational corporations under malleable "green chemistry" targets.

Rather than inflaming "chip war" geopolitics, Gregg calls for a revitalized ecological ethic: chip manufacturers should prove their environmental responsibility to host communities, and, echoing the Vietnam-era "Peace Dividend" demanded by Bay Area activists, redirect subsidized production toward genuinely public and non-military ends.