Water-guzzling chipmaker TSMC and drought-plagued Arizona are an unlikely pair
The Commerce Department announced Monday it pledged up to $6.6 billion to Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer TSMC, which will add a third chip manufacturing facility in Arizona to the two in the works. The grant will go down in Washington as one of the crown jewels of the Biden administration’s initiative to bring the supply chain for ubiquitous—and strategically vital—computer chips back to the United States. But in Phoenix, where the factories are going to be built, TSMC faces a lingering question: where’s the water going to come from in one of the driest cities in the country?