When president Joe Biden traveled to Vietnam last month, he was accompanied by a coterie of leaders from top US technology companies. He and the executives from Google, Intel, Boeing, and chipmaker GlobalFoundries were all on the same mission: to find a new partner to help produce some of America’s most prized technology.
The subtext, conspicuously absent from official statements, is reducing dependence on China. Vietnam is central to a “friend-shoring” strategy the US is hoping can line up alternatives to China to provide the raw materials and manufacturing skills needed for key components in the tech supply chain—and especially semiconductors.
As tensions between the US and China over technology and
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