Abstract
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has come to appreciate the critical value of semiconductor chips (“chips”). Countries around the world have prioritized access to these chips in their efforts to improve national and economic security, whether through onshoring chip-making capabilities, forming alliances to share chip-producing resources, or restricting the export of their chips to geopolitical adversaries. The Chip Security Act (CSA) is the most recent legislation proposed in support of such efforts, proposing the implementation of geolocation tracking technologies for covered chips. This Note critiques this bipartisan bill, arguing that the CSA may be well-intentioned, but is nevertheless poorly framed. By contextualizing the bill in the broader technical and legal landscape concerning geolocation technologies, it focuses on the ambiguous language and lack of enforcement mechanisms that may not only fail to achieve their security objectives, but also actively harm the U.S. chip industry. By recognizing these issues, I offer several technical and enforcement recommendations to reframe the bill, so that—if enacted—the CSA may provide a nuanced balance between bolstering economic security and protecting against cybersecurity risks.
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