By Brian J. Lenihan
Vice President of Government Relations, SkyWater Technology
Brian Lenihan leads SkyWater’s federal and state government advocacy and policy. He has more than two decades of experience in policy and politics across a variety of public and private roles.
From American Invention to Today’s Advanced Manufacturing
Few industries capture the American story like semiconductors. Born from science, refined through disciplined manufacturing, and advanced by generations of engineers, technicians, operators, suppliers, veterans, and inventors, chips represent what America does best: turning bold ideas into technologies that strengthen our economy, security, and way of life.
As America marks 250 years of independence, semiconductors stand as a powerful example of American ingenuity. It has been 100 years since the first field-effect transistor concept was patented and 80 years since the first working transistor was invented in America, a breakthrough that helped define the modern age.
SkyWater is proud to carry that spirit forward. Our roots trace to Minnesota’s technology heritage of the 1950s, where pioneers helped shape the computing industry and launch generations of technology leaders. Today, nearly a decade into our journey, SkyWater is enabling the technologies of the future with our customers, including quantum applications, biomedical innovations, advanced imaging, and next-generation chips for the American warfighter.
As part of our America 250 celebration, watch our video honoring the innovators, builders, and manufacturers helping shape America’s future.
Chips may be small, but their impact is infinite. They power smartphones, allow safer and more autonomous vehicles, refine medical devices, safeguard critical infrastructure, harden defense systems, and enable technologies still being imagined. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) describes semiconductors as essential to both America’s economic and national security, powering systems as simple as a light switch and as complex as a fighter jet.
The U.S. semiconductor industry has long been one of America’s top export industries next to automobiles, petroleum, aircraft, and pharmaceuticals. They are a key driver of economic strength, national security, and global competitiveness.
That makes semiconductor manufacturing more than an industrial priority. It is a national calling.
American leadership in semiconductors has never been only about invention. It has also depended on advanced manufacturing: process control, cleanroom discipline, materials science, precision equipment, software, skilled labor, and continuous improvement. A breakthrough only becomes truly powerful when it can be manufactured, tested, trusted, and delivered at scale.
For semiconductors, this capability is a strategic asset for the nation. A chip is fabricated through hundreds of atomic-scale steps and depends on a strong ecosystem of supply chains, equipment, chemicals, wafers, metrology, packaging, and talent. When those capabilities are close to home, America gains resilience. When they are concentrated abroad, the risks touch our economy, national security, and daily life.
The Return of American Industrial Confidence
The CHIPS and Science Act marked a renewed bipartisan commitment to U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, research, supply chain resilience, and workforce development. This effort is about rebuilding an ecosystem: fabs and foundries, suppliers and universities, advanced packaging and test, defense and commercial markets, startups and established manufacturers.
Trusted domestic companies like SkyWater have an important role to play.
SkyWater is America’s semiconductor manufacturer, headquartered in Minnesota, with U.S. facilities across Minnesota, Florida, and Texas. Through our Technology as a Service model, we combine development services, volume production, and heterogeneous integration solutions. This model matters because the future of semiconductors is not only about the smallest leading-edge geometries. It is also about specialized technologies, trusted manufacturing, advanced packaging, radiation-hardened applications, superconducting and quantum-enabling technologies, MEMS, photonics, and other differentiated platforms.
America needs leading-edge logic capacity, but over 70 percent of the market also requires trusted, flexible domestic manufacturing for specialized chips at foundational nodes—chips that power defense, aerospace, automotive, industrial, medical, and emerging technology systems.
American semiconductor manufacturing is patriotic because it strengthens the nation in practical ways: creating high-paying jobs, building resilient supply chains, securing defense systems, driving regional economic growth, and helping American ideas become American-made technology.
SkyWater’s role is part of that mission.
As a domestic foundry with trusted manufacturing capabilities, we help bridge the gap between research and real-world fabrication, between innovation and production, and between national ambition and national capability.
Our teams are supporting leading quantum companies as they work toward scalable, fault-tolerant systems to increase the time to solution; co-developing gene sequencing and microfluidics technologies for biomedical breakthroughs; delivering adaptive programmable optics to advance LIDAR, 3D sensing, optical communications, and AR/VR displays; and supporting uncooled thermal imaging platforms for commercial and defense applications.
Beyond America’s 250th Anniversary
The United States is entering a new era of semiconductor manufacturing. Rebuilding capabilities after decades of offshoring will require capital, patience, precision, and people. Workforce development will be as important as fab construction. Supply chain resilience will demand coordination across industry, government, academia, and local communities. And technologies such as AI, quantum, advanced packaging, and secure microelectronics will require both scientific imagination and manufacturing excellence.
America has done this before. We have built industries from the ground up, turned research into revolutions, trained workforces, scaled production, protected freedom, and competed with confidence. Semiconductors are the next chapter in that story.
The future will be designed by innovators. But it will be secured by manufacturers.
And when the chips that power that future are built here, by American hands, in American fabs, with American purpose, it strengthens more than an industry. It strengthens our country.