There is no shortage of chip design in the US (I'm in Austin and I constantly bump into these folks), only chip _fabrication_.
What little I know about fab is that extremely bright physicists do rote tasks with horrible schedules. I don't think the solution to that is more education
Waves from a perch overlooking AUS and Giga Texas.
I've run into enough NVIDIA and AMD engineers at The Domain to surmise this is true.
We need a funnel towards training highly-skilled blue-/light-blue-collar workers to feed the strategic needs of said fab industry if the US were serious about building domestic capabilities and competitive independence.
Right now, I don't think the current state of the US education system from national to local levels is promoting the fundamentals needed to attain this goal.
Agree completely. High specialization towards physics and science weeds out other brain types that may have a lot to offer. Trades generally don't do that
Because manufacturing at this scale and precision has extremely thin margins and stringent quality requirements. A coop would necessarily be more communally minded and would be outcompeted by more ruthless efficiency seeking operations
What little I know about fab is that extremely bright physicists do rote tasks with horrible schedules. I don't think the solution to that is more education