Funding Cuts Stall Critical Chip Security Research

As part of the Trump administration’s push to reduce government spending, the U.S. Department of Defense has rolled back more than US $580 million in funding, including $360 million in grants, some of which were tied to universities. The cuts pumped the brakes on troves of projects across the country, including national security-focused research that President Trump deemed unaligned with national priorities.

Among the projects placed on indefinite hold was a multi-year, $3 million study at Cornell University funded through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to examine cyber vulnerabilities in the U.S. semiconductor supply chain. It was one of more than 75 DoD-funded projects at Cornell that received a stop-work order.

The research came amid rising geopolitical tensions and a global AI arms race. Chips are critical to both AI infrastructure and military systems. Without understanding risks—such as design software attacks and IP theft—some experts warn that halting this work could leave the chip supply chain open to sabotage, posing threats to U.S. economic and national security.

Sarah Kreps, a professor of government at Cornell and director of the university’s Tech Policy Institute, led the research. In a conversation with IEEE Spectrum, Kreps explained what her team set out to study, how the project came to a halt, and why securing the chip supply chain is more urgent than ever. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Sarah Kreps on:

How did this project come about?

Sarah Kreps: About two years ago, Micron reached out to the Cornell Tech campus. They were building a $100 billion manufacturing facility near Syracuse and were concerned about the security of their entire supply chain. They said they didn’t have the mental bandwidth or in-house expertise to figure out where the vulnerabilities lay, and therefore couldn’t figure out how to address them.

Cornell Tech said this was an interdisciplinary project they couldn’t handle on their own, so they reached out to us. My work focuses on emergent technologies—AI, semiconductors—with a national security focus, which is what Micron was most interested in, especially with chips that ultimately end up with DoD as the customer. We put together one-pagers about the project, and eventually it made it into the 2025 NDAA. We finally got the grant in December 2024, and the work was set to run for the calendar year 2025.

Why did this feel so urgent?

Kreps: We started this around the time the AI boom really took off. I’ve worked in the AI space since 2018, but it’s completely accelerated. The geopolitics of AI matter. If there’s a goal to be a global leader in AI, then we have to secure the infrastructure underlying it.

Part of the problem is that infrastructure isn’t very sexy. It’s easy to take for granted. But if you want to be a leader in AI, meet national security needs, and fulfill domestic manufacturing goals, you need a resilient supply chain. Our early work…