Conference Report on H.R. Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. SOTO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge the Joint Explanatory Statement to the Conference Report to accompany H.R. 6157, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2019, and Senate Report 115-290 which provide an additional $30 million in funding for Defense- Wide Manufacturing Science and Technology Program's Advanced Manufacturing within the Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Defense-Wide Account. These funds will allow the Department of Defense to establish a Microelectronics Cybersecurity Center.

Microelectronics support nearly all Department of Defense activities, enabling capabilities such as the global positioning system, radar, command and control, and communications. Ensuring secure access to leading-edge microelectronics, however, is a challenge. The changing global semiconductor industry and the sophistication of U.S. adversaries, who might target military electronic components, require us to update our domestic microelectronics security framework.

Defense-Wide Manufacturing Science and Technology is an investment mechanism that allows the Department of Defense to advance state-of- the-art, defense-essential, manufacturing capabilities through the development of technologies and processes necessary to produce defense systems. This funding increase will allow the United States to achieve a rapid modernization of domestic state-of-the-art foundry operations, through the use of not-for-profit public-private-partnerships, to produce trusted microelectronics.

I support rapid modernization of domestic state-of-the-art foundry operations that produce trusted microelectronics and thank the conference committee for all their work on the issue.

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