Seems odd that NIST was the one defining this; the way things are phrased in this press release it doesn't look like a lot of technical knowledge (of which NIST is well endowed) was required. Rather it looks to me that the scope would be bread and butter department of State or Commerce.
What are the "foreign countries of concern", and why do they write it that way instead of just saying China?
> Classifies Semiconductors as Critical to National Security
Well, in a case of direct war with China or Russia, it will not be microchips you would be worried about.
USA is amazingly self sufficient nation, probably more than any other nation in the world, but... it lost far more critical items any nation must manufacture other than iphones.
You will not die from not receiving a new iphone, but you will die from lack of antibiotics if you catch gangrene, or something as dumb as typhus (my uncle died from it in his twenties)
USA can make a superweapons, but can't seem plainly make enough ammo for them. So much bad it is, a single German company produces more shells than entire American industry. All these big tanks, ships, and bombers will become useless in just 2-3 month of intense conflict.
After a big war, you will need huge amounts of basic materials to rebuild fast, before the enemy does the same. I have just to say: China has passed 1 gigaton of steel output per year
The CHIPs act is a very important piece of legislation for American national security. We really are in an untenable situation where certain key resources are almost entirely imported from regions closer to the sphere of geopolitical rivals than to ours. The decoupling from China that is happening is not the result of the CHIPs act, but it is certainly helping things move along.
For Taiwan's sake, it is a good thing that chip production cannot be created or moved quickly, as I believe it is one reason that Taiwan hasn't been invaded by China yet. In the event of a Chinese invasion, those foundrys would be destroyed well before China could wrest control, and even if they did, it would be unlikely that they could keep them in production, given their incredible complexity, unique parts, and requirement of exceptionally skilled labor.
Anyway, I'll use this moment to recommend some of my goto podcast source for info about trade and national security geopolitics: Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS)
https://www.csis.org/podcasts/trade-guys
https://www.csis.org/podcasts/chinapower
https://www.csis.org/podcasts/asia-chessboard
https://www.csis.org/podcasts/truth-matter