A chips clean room at Albany Nanotech is seen in August 2022, after U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer made an announcement about the impact of the CHIPS & Science Act on upstate New York.

If the brewing fight in Washington, D.C., over the CHIPS and Science act sounds faraway and not terribly relevant to your day-to-day life, consider your phone. Or your computer, TV, cable box, watch, or car. Or, if they’re connected to the internet, your dishwasher, refrigerator, range, washing machine, dryer, toaster over, alarm clock or thermostat.

All of those devices are increasingly gaining the ability to gather data on your conversations, your movements, your preferences on everything from entertainment and food to sleep patterns, and – not to make you too paranoid – some of your most intimate secrets.

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Unless you are the most orthodox of Luddites, you are already part of the data economy that is driven, at its heart, by computer chips.

Now expand that to include every wired device in the vast majority of American homes. And in most businesses. Plus every government, much of our power grid, and the military.

And now, ask yourself: Where would you want that technology to be made?

Once upon a time —........

© Times Union