[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 88 (Thursday, May 20, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3187-S3189]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    ENDLESS FRONTIER ACT--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Cortez Masto). The Senator from Virginia.


                                S. 1260

  Mr. WARNER. Madam President, I rise today in strong support of the 
Endless Frontier Act--a long overdue, bipartisan effort to invest in 
our country's innovation and competitiveness.
  I am pleased to see that Congress is finally taking action to shore 
up U.S. investment in the research, development, and manufacturing of 
critical technologies because, without this kind of intervention, China 
in particular will continue to outpace and outperform us in the global 
technology race, impacting our country's economic well-being, our 
global influence, and our national security.

[[Page S3188]]

  Let me note, when I reference China, I think it is important that any 
policymaker or business leader draw this distinction. I want to make 
clear that my beef is with the Communist Party of China and the 
policies of President Xi Jinping, which persecutes its own people in 
terms of Uighurs, restricts the freedom of the people of Hong Kong, and 
creates a surveillance state that would make George Orwell blush. My 
beef is with those policies and that party, not with the Chinese people 
and obviously not with the Chinese diaspora, particularly Chinese 
Americans and Asian Americans.
  In recent years, China has rapidly been executing on a plan. It has 
been working, particularly, to ramp up its domestic industries around 
technology that confer potentially to its long-term strategic dominance 
in a whole host of industries that traditionally the United States or 
the West has dominated.
  One of the topics I am going to come back to in a moment is that of 
semiconductors. China consistently increases its investment in the 
semiconductor industry, with a commitment to invest $150 billion and a 
goal to produce at least 70 percent of the semiconductors it consumes--
it is one of the world's fastest growing economies--by 2030.
  Frankly, on this issue of semiconductors, it is not just China. Look 
around at South Korea, which has pledged to invest over $130 billion 
over the next 9 years, while training 36,000 new microelectronics 
engineers and technicians. Even our allies in Europe--Germany and 18 
other EU members--recently announced investments of up to $60 billion 
in key hardware like semiconductors over the next few years.
  We look back and see how we are doing in America. By contrast, over 
the past 10 years, only 17 major semiconductor fabs, or foundries--
these are basically the manufacturing facilities--have been built in 
the United States, while we have seen over 122 built elsewhere. As a 
matter of fact, right now, there is not a single new fabrication 
facility being constructed in America. The total number of facilities--
fabs, foundries--that are in production has gone from 81 down to 76, 
which are some of our older fabrication facilities.
  Frankly, the technology has leapt forward, and if you don't continue 
to make the investment, you end up with a large, empty facility. We 
even have one right outside of Richmond, in Henrico County.
  As a country, our share of semiconductor and microelectronic 
production has gone from 37 percent to just 12 percent today. If you 
look at China, it is almost the exact inverse, going from single digits 
to north of 30 percent.
  The truth is, in the United States, the cost of a new fab is about 25 
to 50 percent higher, partially because of the lower financial 
incentives we provide and the appropriate environmental standards. It 
does mean that, without incentives, we are not going to be in the game 
right now, partially because of decisions made right at the beginning 
of COVID and partially just because of a semiconductor shortage. We 
have auto factories sitting idle in the United States, not because they 
don't have workers, not because they don't have demand for those 
automobiles, but because these plants can't obtain the semiconductors 
that are integral to automobiles and, for that matter, every device we 
operate.
  At the same time, if we look back again at China, it has no plans to 
take the foot off the pedal anytime soon. As a matter of fact, last 
year, President Xi Jinping announced a $1.4 trillion commitment to 
develop new technologies just through 2025--$1.4 trillion. We think 
about the numbers we are talking about here today, which are big based 
upon traditional American standards, but they pale in comparison to 
what China is investing. You don't need to look very far; you only need 
to look at the Chinese documents themselves--the Made in China 2025 
plan and the China 2035 plan in terms of standards and procedures and 
protocols.
  Beyond semiconductors, 5G, and some of the things I have talked about 
in the past, there is a host of other areas in which, if we don't 
invest, we are not going to be able to stand.
  Now, it is not all bleak. U.S. semiconductor firms in areas like 
lithography, packaging, and metrology still lead the world. In 
machining, we still lead. However, many of the key ingredients to our 
success, including Federal support for R&D, investment in basic 
research, and support for advanced manufacturing, have actually 
declined over the last 20 years.
  Simply put, we are just not keeping up. Between 1995 and 2018, 
Chinese R&D investment increased by over 15 percent per year compared 
to the U.S. increases averaging about 3-percent growth per year. Now, 
we started with a higher base--I acknowledge that--but on relative and, 
shortly, on actual real terms, China will soon pass. As a matter of 
fact, after World War II, the United States funded 69 percent of the 
annual global R&D. Today, we fund less than 28 percent, with only 7 
percent going to nondefense technologies--again, like wireless, which 
is something I know a little bit about and will speak to again in a 
moment.
  To get back to where we once were and reassert U.S. technology 
leadership, we need to reprioritize foundational technologies to 
maintain not just our country's economic leadership but to also make 
sure that our values are built into these increasing technology areas.
  The truth is, for so many years, not only did we invent many of these 
breakthrough technologies here, but even if we didn't invent them in 
the United States, we would then set the rules, the procedures, the 
protocols, and the standards around these new technology developments. 
We have seen that in semiconductors for a long time. We saw it in 
computing. We saw it with the internet. We saw it in wireless. We saw 
it in satellites.
  Time and again now, we are suddenly seeing China flood the zone with 
these standard-setting bodies, and when you set the standards, you also 
reflect your values. So values that we bring to the table, like 
transparency and respect for human rights, go out the window when China 
sets the rules around 5G that basically allow traffic to always pass 
through Beijing. Even if you are making a phone call between St. Louis 
and San Francisco, why does that traffic have to be routed through 
Beijing unless there is a malicious interest at stake? If you set the 
rules, you drive not only the technology but so many other things.
  As chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I have 
long been banging the drum about the way the PRC has taken advantage of 
what makes our country's economic system so great--our openness, our 
transparency, our free markets.
  The Chinese Government, unfortunately, plays by a different set of 
rules. The Chinese Government starts with the willingness to use all 
the tools of its intelligence services, sometimes its student 
population, which has added so much value to our country, and enormous 
thefts of intellectual property. Some public estimates are north of 
$500 billion a year.
  The Chinese Government, as well, is using all aspects of its society 
to increase China's dominance, from the intellectual property theft 
that I talked about to opaque subsidies in financing that always favor 
a Chinese vendor.
  And, unfortunately, for many of our trading partners, the deal that 
is offered by the Chinese firm is often either too good or linked to 
another development--``I am going to build you a road; I am going to 
build you a port, but you have to buy at Huawei, as the price of 
that,'' or because we in America or, for that matter, even in the West 
have not kept up on a financing basis.
  That is why in the Endless Frontier bill that we are debating right 
now, a bill that will make substantial investments in the National 
Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, our National Labs--
both great national assets--in this bill, as well, we are actually 
doing more than authorizing new ideas and new advancements. We are 
actually finally--finally--putting our money where our mouth is.
  It is why included in the Endless Frontier bill is the Utilizing 
Strategic Allied Telecommunications Act, which, at the end of the day, 
is basically $2 billion to invest in making sure that in America we 
have, and in the West we have, a competitor against Huawei.
  I have come to this floor and talked a lot about the national 
security threat Huawei presents in America and, for that matter, to our 
allies.

[[Page S3189]]

  But if you don't have a competitor priced on a fair basis, what do 
you expect to do? What do you expect of an ally country to do? Or for 
that matter, what do you expect of many of the rural telecos' decision, 
which was to buy Huawei equipment, until this vulnerability got 
exposed.
  On this bill I was proud to work with two of my great partners on the 
Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr and Senator Marco Rubio.
  What we do with this $2 billion is put up a public wireless supply 
chain innovation fund to spur investments toward open architecture, 
innovative, leap-ahead technologies in our domestic mobile market.
  And what we are really talking about doing--and I know I have talked 
to the Presiding Officer about this and others--is, in 5G, we are 
almost so far behind at this point that we have to leapfrog ahead. But 
one way we can leapfrog ahead is by developing what is called open RAN, 
or open radio access network. What does that mean in English? Well, it 
means let's move away from the traditional hardware-based stack of the 
telephone wireless system and move to a more software-based system.
  When we do that, we get away from the inherent advantages that the 
Chinese and Huawei have, and we move to an area where there are a host 
of American and other enterprises that are software-based, where we are 
already far ahead.
  Now, what we also have to do, as well, is combine this investment--
and we have close to $500 million on this--to also invest in a 
multilateral fund.
  The truth is, no single American company on its own can take on this 
enormous challenge that the whole Chinese state, backing their Chinese 
champion--there is no way we can take that on, on our own. So how do we 
think, with our other democratic allies around the world, the G7, but 
also countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and India, Israel, 
and others, that we can collaborate on this technology development? 
Think about how we compete on an economic basis and at the same time 
make sure that we install those values around transparency, respect for 
human rights, the notion of open and competitive system, that those are 
built into technology development.
  The second item is crucially that this bill also addresses the 
essential need for us to invest in semiconductors. We are finally 
putting our money where our mouth is. This bill will appropriate on an 
emergency basis $52 billion for investment in chips in our country and 
along with our allies.
  This basically builds upon legislation that we added to the Defense 
authorization bill last year. It is bipartisan. Senator Cornyn, Senator 
Schumer, Senator Cotton, Senator Kelly are all working together on this 
with a host of others because the semiconductor industry, while we have 
seen some sliding, still represents one of the shining lights of our 
country's innovation economy.
  And as a wider array of products and services depend on internet 
connectivity and software processing, the demand for semiconductors has 
only grown.
  But as I outlined at the top unfortunately, that leadership position 
we have had for so long is at stake. So the CHIPS Act, which is built 
in now--baked into the Endless Frontier Act--directs and empowers key 
Agencies, like the Department of Commerce, in consultation with others 
like our intelligence community, to make investments in 
microelectronics R&D a priority. It emphasizes the need for 
multilateral efforts with our allies and close trading partners to 
bring greater transparency and accountability to subsidies. It aligns 
policies toward non-transparent, non-market competitors like the 
Chinese, and it makes sure that we have concerted and coordinated 
action, both domestically and, again, with our allies, on supply chain 
security and integrity.

  It invests billions in basic research related to advanced 
semiconductors via DOD and a newly created National Semiconductor 
Technology Center, and it makes an unprecedented investment in trying 
to build new foundries, fabs, or basic manufacturing facilities, here 
in the United States so that we have that supply security chain--a 
secure supply chain for the future.
  That $39 billion in that fund I believe will help us build 7 to 10 
new fabs right here in the United States. And whether they are in the 
Presiding Officer's State or Virginia or elsewhere, our States will 
have to invest as well. Many of these facilities cost anywhere from $12 
to $15 billion by the time you build them and keep them operating until 
they have some level of profitability. So some level of American 
national investment in each of these is needed to make sure that they--
at least some of these--will be built in the United States. And, again, 
the $39 billion should generate 7 to 10 new fabs over the next 5 to 7 
years.
  And whether it is chips for automotive, aerospace, biomedical, or 
cell phones--you name it--or the billions of ``internet of things'' 
devices, almost all rely upon semiconductors. Let's make sure those 
chips are built, designed, and produced here, and that those elsewhere 
in the world are often done in countries that are allies.
  So the Endless Frontier Act, which includes both the investment in 5G 
and ORAN and, obviously, the semiconductors, serves as a once-in-a-
generation opportunity to solidify U.S. leadership in science and tech 
innovation. It will strengthen our national security and reinvigorate 
American ingenuity.
  The truth is, colleagues on both sides of the aisle, I know we are 
supportive of these efforts. I hope next week that we pass this bill 
with a massive majority, and that then it will be quickly acted upon by 
the House, because I know our domestic industries are watching us. I 
know our adversaries are, as well, and it will be wonderful if we can 
finally move beyond simply talking about the challenges that China 
presents and actually make the kind of tangible investments that 
American generations in the past have made.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Warnock). The Senator from Nevada.
  Ms. CORTEZ MASTO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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