The FAR's Buy American domestic-content bar steps up to 65% through 2028 and 75% in 2029, and Washington's appetite for "trusted" AI supply chains keeps growing -- the FY2026 NDAA expands domestic and allied sourcing rules for defense tech, and OMB's AI procurement memo already tells agencies to "maximize the use of AI products... developed and produced in the United States." A formal domestic-content standard for AI accelerators bought by DoD, DHS, and intelligence-adjacent agencies isn't law yet, but it's the obvious next turn of that screw. When it lands, the fight won't be Nvidia vs. Broadcom on chip quality -- it'll be about who can prove a U.S. zip code touched the silicon last, and that exposes a packaging chokepoint neither company controls.
Here's the catch: TSMC's Arizona fab is already printing Blackwell wafers on American soil, but those wafers still fly back to Taiwan for CoWoS advanced packaging -- the step that turns a bare die into a sellable chip. Broadcom's custom ASICs for Google's TPU, Meta's MTIA, and OpenAI's in-development accelerator run the same TSMC fab-and-package pipeline. Neither company can currently certify a fully domestic-packaged AI chip. The near-term winner is whoever gets U.S. packaging online first -- a subcontractor, not the chip designer.