Semiconductor firms are about to get showered with cash thanks to a new bill, the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 — CHIPS standing for, cleverly, the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors Act. Because it involved free money for capitalists, seventeen Republicans (out of fifty) voted for it despite their habit of voting against almost anything supported by Democrats except money for the Pentagon. Joe Biden signed it on Tuesday, August 9.

It’s a $280 billion package designed to encourage semiconductor manufacturing and research in the United States. Pundits and generals have watched with increasing alarm as chip-making moved from an industry dominated by the United States, and to a lesser extent Western Europe, to a heavily Asian affair, meaning Taiwan, South Korea, and China (the big threat lurking behind all the worry, of course). The COVID crisis highlighted how dependent US and European producers — carmakers, computer companies, appliance manufacturers — have become on Asian chipmakers.

The CHIPS Act is supposed to address all that, bringing the industry back home and restoring Silicon Valley to its rightful place of global dominance. But that’s not all. When she wasn’t stoking war with China (which would require plenty of advanced chips, presumably sourced from countries other than China), Nancy Pelosi took time out to say that the CHIPS Act would create “nearly 100,000 good-paying, union jobs.” One is skeptical.