Michael Barbaro

It's Monday, December 22nd.

Peter, good of you to come into the studio.

Delighted.

I wonder, just to start this conversation, if you can describe this factory that you recently visited to us.

Yeah, sure.

What does it represent, this gargantuan, crane-filled factory-ville?

So it would seem like a very, very big and...

overdue thing to have such a factory building those chips right here in America.

So, Peter, tell us the story of this factory and all the ways in which it suggests a potential future or perhaps the impracticality of that future.

Right, and in a sense, the pandemic was a potential theoretical foretaste of what it would be like if all of a sudden China were to invade Taiwan because it showed us what it looks like when your global supply chains get cut off.

Suddenly, we have to grapple with the idea that maybe all those computer chips can't ever get out of Taiwan.

And what does that insurance actually look like?

That's a really, really big deal given just how much of that...

work was concentrated in Taiwan.

A state would, in theory, kill for this kind of economic activity.

And I know, because you said so at the beginning of our conversation, Peter, that this story is about to take a complicated twist.

But so far, it really does feel worth saying that this is a fable of what's possible in an American system that's not known for getting big domestic manufacturing projects of any kind done.

We'll be right back.

So, Peter, after all of this promise and achievement in the story, what starts to go wrong with the construction of this set of factories after the groundbreaking?

There's no code on page 25 of the local zoning manual that says when building a chip factory here in the desert, this is the lighting system.