President Trump has continued proposing high tariffs on imported semiconductors in an effort to compel foreign chipmakers to localize production on U.S. soil. As reported below in “What you need to know,” Taiwan is the latest to say it cannot transfer its semiconductor ecosystem to the U.S. The news shines a light on the bigger issue, which is how geopolitical tensions can shape the global supply chains and further confuse the regulatory landscape. The issue of semiconductor “traceability” motivated NIST to convene U.S. government agencies, industry bodies, and AI infrastructure heavyweights like Google, Microsoft, AMD, Intel, Micron, and Qualcomm to discuss measures to prove where chips come from and whether they can be trusted. Some of those measures might be authenticated chains of custody, digital certificates, and unique IDs. Tomorrow, RCRTech will explore this topic further, as more semiconductor products are being assembled from chiplets made by different vendors, making it difficult to verify the provenance of components.