Stanford Representative
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On behalf of Stanford University, we're proud to partner with the State Department to launch Foundry School. Foundry School will pursue the ambitious goal of preparing a new generation of American builders. Stanford faculty members worked with the Department of State and consulted with leaders in academia and industry to develop the program's ambitious curriculum. Modern manufacturing has evolved dramatically. Today's cutting edge blends a skilled workforce with AI, robotics, material science, chemistry, software, energy, logistics, and economic business models. Some countries are using industrial policy to build and define the current frontier. Foundry School aims to ensure that the next generation of American students has the knowledge from across disciplines to lead the future of US manufacturing so we can translate great ideas into scalable products. The program is a partnership of multiple universities from across the country drawing on industry expertise. The State Department, the Labor Department intend to build on the program with education, training, and apprenticeships.
Foundry School's design brings together academic faculty and industry practitioners. That combination has long been a distinctive teaching strength here at Stanford, where students benefit from seeing faculty creativity and ideas rub up against practical knowledge and industry experience. The Foundry School program will draw on some of America's true industry leaders who have designed products and processes, operated factories, managed supply chains, and learned lessons about what works. I want to thank the faculty who have developed the Foundry School, our partner universities, and the officials in the departments of State and Labor for taking the initiative to envision this exciting partnership between academia, industry, and government. I'm excited for the program and for what our students and others will learn and accomplish. Thank you.
And now, please allow me to introduce our first session. Moderating the discussion will be Taylor Stockton, Chief Innovation Officer, Department of Labor. Our participants will be Senator Bernie Moreno representing the state of Ohio, Dina Pal McCormack, President and Vice Chairman, Meta, April Anzen, Chief People Officer, Micron, and Ravi Balamanda, president of The Ohio State University.
Well, thanks everyone again for being here and thank you to Under Secretary Hellberg for his tremendous leadership on this initiative. We're excited to get started with a fantastic panel that's talking about how the Trump administration's re-industrialization agenda is bringing back economic opportunity across the country. We have a short amount of time and some great panelists, so we're going to jump right in. Dina, I'd love to start with you. Meta recently announced America's Workforce Academy, a $115 million initiative to help address the skilled trade shortage across America. Would love to learn about how America's Workforce Academy is going, what you're learning so far, and how initiatives like AWA and Foundry School can complement each other to help address this talent shortage.
Well, thank you so much. It is just an honor to be here this morning. A few things you should know is when Under Secretary Hellberg calls you, don't even try saying no. He has done more in a short time in the administration in such a senior leadership position, Under Secretary of State, and in that position in particular bringing business together, academia together, he's the best I've seen at public-private partnerships, so really a huge shout out to you. And of course none of that gets done without the leadership of Secretary Rubio, and we're going to be honored to hear from them and the Vice President in just a moment.
I'm also with my favorite senator, but don't tell my husband that. Seriously, we are excited about America's Workforce Academy. We just launched this a few months ago with a lot of help from the Labor Department. Actually, we found, and you all probably see this every day, that we just can't find enough workers. In the next 5 years, the United States will need 500,000 electricians, welders, construction workers, fiber technicians. And there was some gap happening between those wonderful high-paying jobs and the people that were applying for them. And what we realized is that it does require training. It does require safety certification to get on these job sites, but the people that most need those jobs are often living paycheck to paycheck. They can't afford to take 5 weeks off. They can't afford the training, and they certainly can't afford that without ensuring they're going to have a job at the end. America's Workforce Academy has solved all those things. We actually pay for the training. We guarantee you a job when you are at the end of the program on a Meta infrastructure site, and we pay you the wage that you will get at the ultimate site. We have graduated over 200 people in such a short time. We're extremely proud of our program in Ohio. And what I think we've realized is that the people that most needed these jobs that are living paycheck to paycheck are able to get on these job sites. I think the reason we called it America's Workforce Academy and the reason Meta's name is not in it is because we really are excited to have as many partners as possible, whether of course that's OSU, academic partners across the country. But Mike Rowe, you may know, is a big partner, helped us design the program, and today what we're seeing is that many other companies are signing up to get graduates from this program.
Great, Senator Moreno, thanks so much for being here. Ohio is an epicenter for American re-industrialization and has become one of the clearest examples of the opportunities of this. Would love to understand how has Ohio attracted this manufacturing investment ranging across semiconductors, energy, so many different areas, and how can efforts like Foundry School help contribute to the broader efforts to reshore our production.
Well, thank you for having me, and let me just point out that Ohio is the number one state to do business in according to CNBC, not according to me. So, we're number one. It's good. The only university that's named here that's a national championship in football, point that out too. But look, it's not complicated. You have to create a great environment for business to come in. That means making certain that you have affordable land, affordable energy. Ohio was Texas before Texas was Texas. We have incredible natural resources there that, whether it was coal, oil, natural gas, that's extraordinarily important in a battle for energy. But I will say that Ohio is also an example of where bad policy meets communities. And if you were somebody like me that has never been in politics ever in my entire life up until 18 months ago and you drove to every corner of Ohio, what you'd realize is that policymakers here in Washington, DC betrayed working Americans. They thought it was a good idea for us to chase cheap labor in foreign countries instead of making certain that good, high-paying jobs existed in America. Ultimately, the most important responsibility of an elected official is to look out for its own citizens. And we have to make certain that somebody in America can graduate from high school, get a good high-paying job where one member of the family, a husband or a wife, can have a job that allows them to own a home, own a car, and retire with dignity. And we betrayed that promise. And you see it in Dayton or Youngstown or Toledo that these were once the most wealthy cities in America. In fact, Cleveland, Ohio and Detroit were the number one and number two wealthiest cities in the United States of America 60 years ago. So, what we're doing is making certain that we reindustrialize those communities, that we focus on building up our working class. One of the things that I'm working on here in the United States Senate is a bill called the Connected Vehicle Security Act, which is intended to make certain that we hermetically seal the US market from the threat of a predatory Chinese auto industry, which basically didn't exist five or six years ago, and now it's wreaking havoc throughout the entire Western world. Just to put it in perspective, between exports in the United States and the cars that we make here, that we sell here, we're about 63%. So we import about 37% of the cars that we sell here in the United States, the second largest auto market in the world. China makes 37 million cars a year. We make 10. They now export more cars than we make in the United States. And they're destroying the industrial base of Western countries. We're not going to let that happen. It's important for us to be proactive and not always reactive. So, we are in an era of a new industrial policy. From President Trump to Secretary Rubio to Vice President Vance to myself, Senator McCormack feels the same way. We're going to do everything possible to make certain that we protect our working class and grow it.
Well, it's hugely important learnings and so we appreciate all your work, Senator. April from Micron, we appreciate you being here. Micron has developed an earn-and-learn apprenticeship model in which workers receive wages, technical instruction, and hands-on experience that leads to a credential. What has Micron learned about what makes an apprenticeship program work for both the American worker and a manufacturer?
Yeah, in semiconductor, as many of you know, we're growing at breakneck speed and we have done a lot invested, we're investing $250 billion in manufacturing and R&D here in the United States. And we're moving as quickly as we can to serve our customers in industries like automotive. We know the demand for memory is just incredible. Automotive, healthcare, consumer, aerospace, defense, all of those markets rely on memory. So, it's incredibly important that we move at pace with these investments. But these investments will not deliver an ROI if we don't have the people and the workforce to help run these investments and make these investments successful. So, before we even put a shovel in the ground, we started our apprenticeship program. We're actually running apprenticeship programs on both coasts. We've got Virginia, we've got Idaho up and running. And we've graduated two cohorts of apprentices and we're nearing triple-digit participation in these apprenticeship programs. You know, these earn-and-learn models are incredibly important and we're finding it really attracts a broad set of people to these important jobs. Whether it's a high school graduate that isn't sure what they want to do or maybe they don't have the financial means to go to a four-year institution right after they graduate high school, this is a great opportunity for them. But it's also a great opportunity for people who are maybe mid-career and they want to switch careers. As you can imagine, if you have a family of five, it's really hard to walk away from your job and enter a training program and enter an entirely new career path. But these apprenticeships open up that opportunity. They can earn and learn at the same time and their family doesn't have to take a step back in terms of their financial means. So the potential these programs are, the opportunity these programs are creating is just immense. And we also have taken the step, just in fact two weeks ago we opened up a training center in Boise, Idaho, a 60,000-foot training center, and of course we'll train our workforce there, but we're also inviting the local community college to actually run the courses at our training center, which makes it even more accessible for our apprentices to go to school, get their coursework done, come to the workplace, get their work and training done on site, right? And still have the opportunity to take care of their family and have a personal life. So, making it easy for these apprentices is really, really important. I will tell you, for every cohort that enters our apprenticeship program, we do a signing day and we invite the families to signing day, and I have never seen as many tears of joy that I have seen at a company event that I see at these signing days. And the moms, the dads, the husbands, the wives, the kids come to this signing day and you would think these people won the lottery or just signed a professional sports contract because they are so excited about this opportunity. It's a generational opportunity and it really is a, you know, we gain skilled workers who are very committed because we've invested in them from day one. These apprenticeship programs, they are win-win programs.
Yeah, registered apprenticeships are a huge priority for the Trump administration and for my boss, the Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, and so appreciate the great work that you're doing. Ravi from Ohio State, appreciate you being here. Ohio State's Center for Design and Manufacturing Excellence gives students hands-on exposure to emerging technologies. What does that kind of industry-connected education teach students that perhaps a conventional classroom cannot? And how can efforts like Foundry School bring more of that experience to students nationwide?
Absolutely. We're delighted to be here. Warms my heart to see the sign there. The future belongs to builders. We were happy to host Keith at the center not a couple of weeks ago. It is the largest manufacturing classroom in the country. I believe CDME, we have 150 companies at any given time. 150 engineers, material scientists, chemists, physicists working together, computer scientists. An example is there's a small company called Skull in Piqua, Ohio, just north of Dayton, and they have 18 employees, and they're working on a novel high-pressure sand casting technology for defense alloys, and they can't afford to hire an engineer, train them for six months or one year to have an employee be productive. They work with our students all along, co-design things, get to know our students and hire students as appropriate. And for our students, you know, I learned and grew up in a system that is all theory. We were good at math and physics, but the real world is complicated. When you're building something, you need to know how to adapt in the real world, and that's a different skill set. And CDME is that classroom where our students are working with real-world problems with employers on equipment given to us by the industry. It's a fantastic example. Another example is we have an applied engineering degree that we offer in our regional colleges. In fact, in Lima, Ohio, our student classroom for this program is actually in the Ford factory. They take their classes in the Ford factory next to the manufacturing plant. And there's a certain kind of magic that happens when our students know the why early in STEM. As an engineer myself, you know, people think of, you know, calculus and all this stuff and we lose a lot of our students because they're afraid of what this is. But there's a certain creativity that comes from building and a joy from creating that I know from my own personal experience that our students are experiencing now. And I'm very grateful for this effort to bring manufacturing back to the US. And coming from Ohio, it's a big part of what's making Ohio thrive and we're happy to play our role in contributing to that future.
Well, thank you so much for your leadership on that. Dina, I'd love to bring you back in as multiple panelists including the senator have mentioned that this panel has strong connections to Ohio, which Meta has selected for one of America's Workforce Academy's launch sites. Would love to hear more about why Meta chose Ohio for its training facility, how you built partnerships with government and other stakeholders, and how you're finding the talent to come through your program.
Sure. Well, we are proud to work with the leadership in Ohio. As Senator Moreno said, it's really becoming a state of so much innovation and frankly partnership. For us, we have a number of infrastructure sites there. We have 5,000 jobs that are actually at peak in about a year. And also we have had the ability to work with small businesses there. The Buckeye Lady, who you may know, is a bakery that started in a small kitchen, has now doubled her workforce, doubled her market share because of all this investment that is coming in. But again we realized we need the skilled labor and we needed an academic partner to work with and Ohio State has just been outstanding. We deliver the program at OSU and of course then they can actually go into the jobs that exist at our infrastructure sites in New Albany and Bowling Green. I will say to your point, it is so unbelievable to meet these graduates and if you'll allow me, Javanti Smith, please stand up. He is a graduate from our program in Ohio. He did the OSU program and is now working in New Albany at a Meta infrastructure site. And we were just talking, I mean, I cannot honestly reiterate the pride that we feel to have him now be part of Meta.
There's a 90% retention rate and I think one of the most important things that the Foundry School and this alliance is bringing together is sharing our best practices. We all need skilled labor. There is no pride of authorship in any of these programs. And for institutions, a couple more that are my favorites are here like the president of Penn State, the chancellor of Vanderbilt where my daughter attends. I do have to give little shout-outs there. But to have the quality of these institutions come together, bring us together, Micron, Meta, other businesses and just share these best practices. What it's going to mean, Jacob, is just we're now going to come out, I think, with a compact in these communities across the country where there are a lot of questions about this issue, of course, and how we invest in the very best job training programs that turn into multi-year, generational, family-changing opportunities that we could not be more proud of. And you know, I think one of the things that I have heard both President Trump and Secretary Rubio say, this is a pretty important moment in America's history. During World War II, our country came together to build, to physically build an arsenal that defeated tyranny in the world. This is another transformational moment where America has to come together to build that similar infrastructure. If America is going to be a leading force in artificial intelligence and technology and economic and national security beyond just us but for our allies around the world. And so these are programs that I, what I really think of them as, whether it's Javonte or the graduates in your programs, these are the American heroes today that are on those front lines.
Well, on the point of multi-stakeholder collaboration within these communities, Senator Moreno, would love to come back to you on that same point. What should policymakers do to work with these different stakeholders, academia, industry, and our allies to make sure that American AI innovation creates these durable careers for people living across these American communities?
Well, one of the things that we do really well in Ohio, it's one team. Whether it's economic development, community colleges, universities, government agencies, we, like I said earlier, we make it easy. We want to make certain that when you think of Ohio that it's the easiest, simplest, best place to do business. Eliminate as much friction as humanly possible. Everybody's on the same page. That's extraordinarily important. Let me just touch on also one thing that's I think critical to this conversation. We're in a building called the Institute of Peace. And if you really want to understand how America can be strong to ensure peace and stability around the world, it's because we have the best and strongest economy on earth. When we're strongest at home, we can project that strength around the world. When we're weak at home, when our economy is suffering, when our working class is left behind, that's when there's instability around the world. So, there is a nexus between that. And my invitation to every job creator is consider Ohio, consider America because if you want to sell things here, you're probably going to want to make things here. I look at the Japanese ambassador. They were early in Ohio. Honda came to the United States in 1979 and now has more automobiles made in the state of Ohio than probably anywhere else on Earth. We value those kinds of partnerships and we invite others to join us in Ohio.
Great. And I know we're wrapping up on time here, but maybe last word from April and Ravi. As these major investments are happening, so many different partners in the room who are looking to get engaged in this work, make sure that American re-industrialization leads to high-quality careers. What would you like to see from other actors to really make sure that we can maximize this moment and make the most for American workers?
I think today's conversation is exactly where we need to be. It's about partnerships and for Micron, our investments are so massive. Our fabs, of course, you know, $250 billion in manufacturing and these fabs, if you've seen one, the scale is incredible. It's the size of 10 football fields, just a single fab. And we cluster these fabs together. So, as you can imagine, massive investment, but that requires a scaled and skilled workforce, and we cannot do it alone. We need great partners. We need our corporate partners, our government partners, our education institutions to come together. So, I think this is just the beginning of an incredible journey that we're all going to have to be on together. And this is something that the US hasn't done in a while for some of these jobs, the technician workforce, the construction workforce. So, it's not going to be easy, but I think all of us coming together will make this happen and make America really strong.
I'll just add that we'd like to be the most business-friendly university in the country, and our scale is incredible. And we value partnerships with Honda and our partners here on stage. We'd like to be the R&D lab for manufacturing in the country. We have a robotic blacksmith called Agility Force. We're investigating new kinds of semiconductors with ultra-wide bandwidth for high-pressure and high-frequency applications. Looking at new materials in our amazing material science facility. So we're all in on this and I'm so delighted to be on this panel and for all of you for organizing this event. The future is through manufacturing and states like Ohio and the Midwest, where I strongly believe that, and I will commit my colleague from Penn State and others who are here that we are all in on this and I'm very excited to participate in this project.
Great. Well, we're out of time, but please help me in thanking our panelists for this great conversation.
Thank you panelists. And now onto our next session. Moderating this discussion will be Joshua Lavine from the Foundation for American Innovation. Our participants will be US Deputy Secretary of Energy James Danley, Jim Kunman, Chief Customer Officer, ASML, Thomas Zakaria, Senior Vice President, AMD, and Anna Corales, Chief Operating Officer for Devices and Services, Google. Please welcome them all.
Well, good morning. Thank you first and foremost to the under secretary for hosting this event, for bringing us all together around a cause that I really can't think of a more important issue to be focusing on right now than re-industrialization and preparing America for the next generation kind of industrial capacity. So to start with that, I'd love to come to deputy secretary. Energy is a critical component of industrial capacity for powering all the amazing innovation we're seeing in AI, in semis. How is the administration really focused on this goal and what successes have you really been proud of and what do you think, you know, is more to come?
So as soon as the president took office he understood just how dire the situation was, that we are blessed with such incredible abundance. This was the result of decades of very bad policy driving out, for example, in electricity, dispatchable generation in preference for intermittence, and the result was that we had a system in which there was very little headroom. We had scarcity which caused prices for utilities to rise on a broad basis although not uniformly everywhere. Good policies in different states yielded lower price increases. And so he issued a series of executive orders and we began in our mission of ensuring affordable, reliable, secure energy by retaining all of the assets on the transmission system, all the generators we could. And so we've either saved or upgraded about 40 gigawatts of coal generation, all of which was fundamental and necessary to the system being stable and allowing for that growth. And we had proof of this during Winter Storm Uri. Those assets were running flat out the whole time and without them we would have had instability in the transmission system. So we averted a potential catastrophe there. But really it's a matter of retaining every asset we have, reconducting the transmission system to ensure that we have as much reach for the pre-existing generation fleet, upgrading existing generators to squeeze as much blood out of the stone as we can for what is actually still in the ground already. And then on a longer term basis to develop the generation fleet. We've been exploring every possible path to deploy nuclear as quickly as we can. The nuclear EOs that the president issued were absolutely groundbreaking. In the course of 10 months, we brought four small modular reactors in the DOE from just drawing board IP all the way to prototype and criticality testing. And now they're ready to be handed off and they are being handed off to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for civilian deployment. When that happens, it is going to be a game-changer because these are small reactors that can be much more easily accommodated without huge transmission upgrade requirements. And once that happens and we have that huge amount of electricity placed logically across the system, the pinch that we are feeling right now is not going to be nearly as acute. Prices will drop and we're going to have the kind of abundance that we need for the re-industrialization of America. And it's not just for the chip fabs, right? It's also for the facilities that they're eventually going to be going into, right? Those are large consumers. But what people don't realize is you want as much demand for electricity as possible because that spreads the cost of the system out across a larger number of ratepayers. And so ultimately the prices will go down. And in order to ensure that the residential ratepayer, that the average American doesn't bear the cost of any of this development, the president had the ratepayer protection pledge in which the hyperscalers and utilities and states all got together and agreed that they were going to insulate the residential ratepayer from cost effects. It's been very successful.
Yeah. And so to your point on putting together foundries and fabs, but also thinking you have the technology that lives within those locations and the people who make those things possible. I think I want to go to our three other panelists who you all have, you know, think your companies have really unique programs and have made, you know, significant investment that I think is, you know, hopefully a characterization of what Foundry School really can enable. So I'll start with you Jim talking about ASML's work in Phoenix but also more broadly kind of engagement with universities and then to Thomas and Anna how each of your companies are thinking about kind of this next generation of both education but deployment of talent.
Yeah. So ASML, we deliver equipment into semiconductor fabs around the world, also in the US of course, and to keep that equipment running requires a substantial workforce of highly trained individuals. When we saw a few years back, we saw the growth, the expected growth in the building of semiconductor fabs here in the US, whether it's Micron as we heard from the previous panel or Intel, TSMC, we saw this huge need to expand our workforce in the US with the right trained people who could keep this very expensive, very sophisticated equipment running. So in Phoenix, in the Phoenix area, we developed a training center. So, we invested some 35-40 million dollars in that training center and we're training 1,500 individuals per year that will be in that room and that is an investment that quite simply we would not be able to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the US if companies like ASML and Lam and Applied Materials weren't doing those sorts of things to make sure they have the staff in order to support those tools. In Phoenix, we not only train ASML employees, but we also train our customers. So, it's very much running lithography. ASML builds lithography tools. Running those tools is very complex. So, we have courses. We allow them hands-on activities where they can learn how to maintain this equipment in the semiconductor fab. And that investment we think is going to pay off and really enable us to support the growth of the semiconductor industry here in the US.
Now Thomas, I love your, AMD obviously has its university partnerships. You guys have worked tirelessly to, you know, think some of the universities in the room but then I'm sure many others to, you know, to catalyze and lay the foundation for kind of this next generation of talent. How does a company think about it and how are you guys starting to, you know, target areas of need versus, you know, how do you manage that supply and demand of talent?
Indeed. Well, good morning to all of you. It's a pleasure to be here with this distinguished panel. And this is really a timely and important moment, really taking this, making this a priority and we at AMD are really proud to be part of this effort. If you just step back and reflect for a minute, it's very clear to me and to all of you, I'm sure, that the history of humanity is defined by the tools that we create and how we train the people to use those tools. And you would agree that this generation's tool is artificial intelligence. And as the deputy secretary mentioned, it's probably even more so at the intersection of AI and energy, technology and energy. And so the Foundry School is squarely placed in that direction, in that area. The importance is clearly recognized by AMD, by our chair and CEO Lisa Su, who pledged $150 million as part of the AI action plan in order to make sure that we are supporting the education. Now it's really important as a corporate citizen to support this program but it's also clearly important for us as a company. There is no aspect of what we do that is not touched by AI today. In fact all of us, all 40,000 of us have had to go through AI training because every facet of our work is dependent on it. So being part of creating that pipeline in order to make sure that we not only are supporting administration priorities, but it's also something that's really important for us to succeed. So I'll just use two examples. One, as I mentioned, AMD has pledged $150 million to support the education effort. It's administered through our AMD university program. There are a number of universities including universities here represented where we actively work with, partner with in order to make sure that the students have access to the latest and greatest technology. Once again we hope that they remember when they graduate. So I certainly believe there's a self-interest but it's really AMD at the highest level feels that this is really an important moment in time that we need to be supportive. The other thing is that we do have, I mean, so as a merchant-scale industry that touches every aspect from laptop to desktop to core infrastructure all the way to the edge, having this technology in the hands of people is very, very important. That's why we partner with the Department of Energy and Secretary Wright in order to deploy the first sort of sovereign AI factory as a public-private partnership. It has never been done before in that way and we are very proud that that system is already up and running and hopefully we will be accessible to countless university professors, students, postdocs as well as industry. So again I think this is really an important time and place in order to make sure that these technologies are in the hands of the next generation of students who will be part of the leaders who will drive this change. So we're proud to be here. Thank you.
Now to Anna. Google is, I think, fundamental to the AI revolution that we're currently seeing playing out not only in building the software and the models that I think people are familiar with but also leading in capex and the actual industrial capacity and build. I know Google's committed to bringing, you know, skilled workers and creating opportunities for workers. So I'd love to have you kind of talk about as a company that sits across this whole stack, like this whole production function almost, you know, what's most important for you and where right now, you know, do we need more capacity?
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you first of all for inviting us and to be part of this event and to be part of this movement. As I said, I think in the previous panel was said this is a really important moment and I think we all feel that and we know that. You mentioned Google. Google has been, you know, more than over 10 years focused on AI and AIE. When you talk to people and they think about Google they mostly think about that software stack but I think if you talk to most of us who are in the leadership team we're spending so much time in the physical stack. And I wonder if people sort of realize that and I think that goes to the core of the Foundry School and making sure that people realize how important that is. Me personally, this is a really key, key thing for me and I really believe that education changes lives and I think we realized at Google how important that was. There was going to be a re-education because that was our first bottleneck was this issue of the talent, this issue of people understanding. We were talking earlier, you know, all of us how important it is for, you know, college-age kids, high school kids to realize that this is a career that they can do, that there is a physical, a very, very physical element. Energy is really important. There's a lot of physics and engineering involved in being able to do that. Of course, there is equally important, you know, foundational models like Gemini and many other things that we do, but there is a real physical stack to that. From our perspective, you know, Google I think has taken pride for many, many years of being able to provide education for everyone. So that I think enters a new era for us. We have definitely, as you mentioned, right, have our Grow with Google program. We have invested 50 million in kind of reskilling especially for people in different communities across 20 states to be able to give them opportunities that maybe they weren't even aware existed. In addition to that, you know, something we're really proud of is investing, you know, a billion dollars in sort of educating and being able to give that ability to everyone. One of the examples of that is if you're a college student in the United States now, you can actually use that. It'll be a free program. It'll be able to train you and give you access to this type of curriculum. I am an alum of Stanford. I'm in the engineering leadership council and I can absolutely assure you that this is one of the most critical conversations that happens in that room all the time and I think the Foundry School is really augmenting that, creating a national conversation about the importance of this and giving, you know, giving that opportunity to every single person that is in college, that is in high school who can now know that these are options for them that previously they did not know were available. So we take that extremely seriously. And it's really a pleasure to be here and partner with all of you on that.
That's excellent. I know we're getting close to the end, but I want to, I guess a question I guess across the panel here is, you know, I think this, you know, new industrial revolution, re-industrialization, the AI boom, it's going to create a ton of opportunity. But we're not maybe quite sure yet exactly where those opportunities are going to be placed and what these technologies, what the next innovations they're going to unlock. So across all of you, you know, how are you thinking about investing and putting the, you know, putting capital toward the things that you're going to be most productive or are there areas that you're excited about in growth that you think, you know, the students of tomorrow if they're looking to Foundry School, things they should be kind of keyed in? I'll start with you, Jim, then.
Yeah. Well, I think if when you think about the growth that's coming in the world with AI and with all of these new technologies, I think the foundational part of that is semiconductors and semiconductor equipment and running the fabs that are going to build the chips that are going to enable all of this value creation. So from an ASML perspective, it's all about how do we create the technology and improve the technology to enable this future that we're also excited about. So we're putting our money where our mouth is in that respect in not only training the people but in developing the technologies here in the US. We spend about a third of our R&D here in the US even though we're a Dutch company, developing those technologies that are going to enable us to shrink the size of the transistor, be more power efficient so we can create that wealth that this country needs. So I think that's how we're looking at it from my perspective.
So I think without a doubt as I mentioned earlier, AI is a transformative technology and the transformation is not going to be limited to provide, you know, sort of the seductive instant information of, you know, at your fingertip, but in reality the way it is going to impact our daily life is when it touches daily life, so out in the edge. And so I think we as a company, while we are truly a semiconductor company, we are now certainly becoming a systems and solutions company because that's really where this huge technology is going to engage with society out in the edge, whether it is healthcare, whether it is education, whether in all facets of life, whether it is physical AI, robotics, manufacturing. So I think our goal is to make sure, and I also, the innovation productivity, I have to also give a shout out to the Genesis Mission if you think about trying to double the innovation productivity of America so that we can be competitive. So I think what we want to do is to make sure that we are working hand in hand with the administration, the policymakers, academia and industry to make sure the solution is available in order to achieve the sort of transformative impact that we all hope it'll provide.
So, you teased one of my responses, which is Genesis. But before that, I'll say we're going to have a different answer with the DOE in a sense because the labs, the 17 national labs have the general mandate to go do science, right? That is a very broad subject matter. And some of it is applied and has clear end goals. Others is fundamental research that has no obvious commercializable opportunity at the end. But along the way the amount of serendipity that occurs and things that you learn that you never expected to has led to truly profound value down the road. And also, in fact we have a lab director to my left. The labs themselves are magnets to draw the best minds we have in America. It seems like all we have are, you know, new classes of hundreds of postdocs showing up constantly. They are a phenomenal... Yeah, he was one of them in fact, then ended up going all the way to the top at Oak Ridge.
They are a phenomenal training ground for the first actual job that you have, doing real research right out of school. And so the human capital part is being worked on for the STEM graduate level there. We have efforts ongoing right now to get as many people through the lower degrees as well. We're working with Commerce and Education on that. And when you look at the opportunities there, the labs are enablers, right? They do the less flashy, less public part of it, doing all of the fundamental research that allows the rest of America to sprint. And when you have anyone from a Nobel laureate to a university professor, they all draw upon the lab's work. So that is opportunity that we have been using for decades and trying to make it as widely available as possible for the benefit of America.
The other thing is the Genesis mission, where the concept is take all of the data across the lab complex, all 17 labs. That's a vast repository of information. We have the most exquisite user facilities and the most fantastic equipment, and we can run any number of different kinds of experiments in everything from material science to particle physics, and use the AI models that we're employing to squeeze more value out of the research dollars. And so imagine if you were to double the total amount of money we spend across America using this model that we're proving out. We would go from a trillion dollars a year in R&D to two trillion.
And then better than that over time is that that data that comes out of the experiments is properly curated as it leaves. It'll be fed back in to have a multiplicative value and make it all that much more efficient and squeeze yet more money out of the research dollars spent. So really I see the opportunities here as continuing the research broadly that the labs do on virtually every subject under the sun, continuing that development of human capital that the labs have been central to. They have been central to the development of American technology and science, and then harnessing through Genesis as our first iteration the data that we're getting from the labs, and then try to spread that model across America so that everybody benefits from this AI-improved research.
For me, I'm just going to go back to the science. I think when you look at what we've done, you know, we are in our eighth version of our TPU. We started that journey 10 years ago. It's hard. It's hard to do it. It's hard to make it more efficient. It's like a real mathematical science fun problem, and I think people will be drawn to that. You talked about the edge. You know, our mobile phones also have for the first time our fifth generation tensor chip also. I've been there since the very first day when we started making that chip. The amount of science innovation that that has to bring in all dimensions, energy being one for sure. You know, we're trying to get to 20 or 30% improvements. Those are real intellectual challenges that I think top students and people will be drawn to in being able to make a difference. And I think it's a new moment with AI that opens those possibilities, and it's like a whole new set of new problems that really curious, intellectual, hardworking people will be drawn to. So I think it's our mandate to make sure that we make that accessible to everyone as much as possible.
Certainly, and I think hopefully Foundry School is the platform that brings London in to solve these problems. That's all the time we have. I want to thank all my panelists, and thank you again, Secretary, for hosting us. [applause]
Ladies and gentlemen, we request that guests please remain seated while we adjust the stage for the rest of our program.
Thank you for the opportunity to take part in today's event. I wish I could join you in person, but I am on the road meeting with the workers and business owners who are spurring the next generation of American industrial greatness. There has never been a president more committed to reviving American manufacturing than President Trump. I want to thank Vice President Vance for his leadership in convening this launch, and Under Secretary Hellberg and the State Department for building the partnership that made Foundry School possible. I'm also grateful to Senator Moreno and Leader Scalise for standing with us today, and presidents and senior leaders of the eight partner universities.
For too long, a generation of ambitious American workers were told that the factory floor was somewhere to be left behind, not somewhere to build a career or a profitable business. Programs like the Foundry School are a part of President Trump's plan to correct that. Thanks to President Trump, investments are pouring in in critical industries like auto manufacturing, shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals, and defense are roaring back. At the Department of Labor, we are expanding registered apprentices and working with the Department of Education to implement workforce Pell grants so that Americans who choose to build things with their hands are met with the same respect and the same opportunity as those who choose to go to college and work in an office.
But as we work to build up skilled workforces, we also need manufacturers to know how to scale their businesses. Through Foundry School, we are building an educational curriculum for the future and restoring the technical know-how businesses need to power American manufacturing into a new era of industrial dominance. Because nothing is better than products made in America, made by American workers. Thank you for all you do and for this event today.
Hi, I'm Kelly Lesler, administrator of the US Small Business Administration. I am so thrilled to mark the launch of the Foundry School, especially after spending the last year and a half traveling our great nation. From Alaska to Maine and across every single industry, here's the common thread. Thanks to President Trump and his commitment to the American worker, made in America is back. Fair trade is working because President Trump stood up for American industry. He's ending decades of bad trade deals that shift our factories and our jobs overseas to foreign adversaries. Today, work orders are flowing in to American factories at levels not seen in decades. And that demand is showing up in our manufacturing and export data month after month.
Small producers make up 98% of all US manufacturers. And they have one critical request: please help us find skilled workers. There are nearly half a million open manufacturing jobs in the United States today. And the need is only growing as 19 trillion dollars in new investment commitments translate to new production lines. And that's why the Foundry School is so vital. It's preparing the next generation to fill careers of the future today in defense, aerospace, artificial intelligence, energy, and advanced manufacturing and beyond. So, I want to thank the many universities, including Georgia Tech in my home state, for recognizing that our young people are as capable of rebuilding to new heights of industry as they are essential to American innovation, economic strength, and national security.
And now, please give a warm round of applause for House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
Good morning and thank you all for coming. I appreciate that you're here to listen to my remarks. I hope you stay behind to listen to the vice president as well when he comes. No, look, it's really good to be here, and I want to start by first congratulating Vice President Vance, Secretary Rubio, Under Secretary Hellberg, Stanford University, and all the university and business leaders who have worked so hard to make Foundry School possible. What you're launching today comes at an incredibly exciting time for our country. When President Trump was swept back into office, he made it clear that American manufacturing was going to be at the heart of America's golden age.
For too long, we watched factories shutter and good-paying jobs leave our shores. President Trump promised we were going to reverse that trend and bring manufacturing back to America. And that's exactly what's happening. US manufacturing activity surged in July at the strongest rate in over four years. More than 18,000 manufacturing jobs have been created this year alone. And manufacturing wages are up more than 4% over the last year, putting more money in the pockets of American workers. That is a remarkable turnaround. And Republicans in Congress have been proud to work with President Trump to help make this possible. Last year, we passed the transformational Working Families Tax Cut to make America the best place in the world to build, invest, and create good-paying jobs.
Now, we have to keep building on that momentum. Because at the same time American manufacturing is coming back, there is a global race underway for industries that will define the next century. China wants to dominate artificial intelligence, semiconductors, critical minerals, energy, defense, and advanced manufacturing. We cannot let China win this race. America has the best workers, entrepreneurs, universities, and innovators in the world. But maintaining that advantage means making sure the next generation of Americans have the skills to lead in these industries. And the demand is going to be huge. As you've heard this morning, American manufacturers are expected to need nearly 4 million skilled workers by 2033.
It's engineers, technicians, entrepreneurs, industrial leaders. But this isn't just about filling jobs. It's about making sure America has the best talent to out-innovate, out-build, and out-compete China for decades to come. And that's why the Foundry School is so important. What I especially like about this program is the partnership behind it. You're bringing together some of the best universities in America with founders and CEOs who are actually on the front lines of innovation. These are people building companies, creating jobs, and developing new technologies. They know what skills they need. They know where the technology is going. And they know what it takes to compete. And now they're going to be bringing that expertise directly into our universities to help prepare the next generation.
That's exactly the kind of partnership we need. Government does have a role to play. We can cut taxes. We can get unnecessary regulations out of the way. We can unleash American energy and we can make it easier to build things in this country. And that's exactly what President Trump and Republicans in Congress have been doing. In the Working Families Tax Cut, we allowed companies to fully expense the cost of building new factories in America, one of President Trump's top priorities. We restored full expensing for domestic research and development. And we provided full expensing for investments in new equipment and machinery. We're making it easier to build here, innovate here, and create good-paying jobs here.
And you're seeing the results. Trillions of dollars of new investment coming into America. But government can only create the conditions for success. The ingenuity that has always made America the greatest economy in the world comes from our entrepreneurs, our businesses, and most importantly, our workers. That's why it's so important that the private sector is helping lead this effort. And it's also why what you're doing here fits so well with the work Secretary Rubio, Under Secretary Hellberg, and the State Department are doing through PAX Silica. If we're going to beat China, we can't remain dependent on them for critical products and supply chains that our economy and national security depend on.
Through PAX Silica, the United States is working with trusted partners like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and India to strengthen those supply chains and reduce our dependence on China. At the same time, Foundry School is bringing together our universities and the private sector to strengthen America's greatest competitive advantage. That's our people. That's what excites me about this initiative. President Trump has changed the trajectory of American manufacturing. Republicans in Congress are putting policies in place to make it easier to build and invest here. Our businesses are leading the world in innovation. And now we have an opportunity to make sure the next generation of Americans is prepared to take that progress even further.
Because if we get this right, we're not just going to bring back industries and jobs that America lost. We're going to lead the industries of the future, and there is no country in the world I would bet more on than the United States of America. That's why I'm excited about the Foundry School and what you're building here. So congratulations again to Vice President Vance, Secretary Rubio, Under Secretary Hellberg, Stanford, and all the participating universities and the business leaders who are investing their time and experience in our next generation. Thank you. God bless you and God bless these United States of America.
Please welcome back our host for today's program, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Jacob Hellberg.
Every so often, history hands a nation a choice: to drift or to build. And every so often, it hands that nation a leader who inspires people to reject the drift and build with boldness and confidence in the future. One of our guests this morning is the son of Cuban exiles, a man whose family fled a regime that confiscated everything, and who grew up understanding in his bones that freedom and prosperity are not inherited. They're defended and they're built. That heritage made him clear-eyed, and it gave him something rare in Washington: the memory of what it costs when a country loses its future.
For two decades in the United States Senate, he warned us. He warned us that we traded our industrial base for the illusion of cheap abundance. He warned us that supply chains had become weapons pointed at us. And this year in Munich, in a speech that will be studied for a generation, he said what no secretary of state had dared to say: that de-industrialization was a choice and that re-industrialization must now be ours. He called on the free world not merely to defend Western civilization but to build a new Western century. Under President Trump's leadership, he has turned that vision into policy, restoring American economic strength as the foundation of national power, and reminding the world that the arsenal of democracy was never a metaphor. It was a factory floor.
He's a statesman, a patriot, and the driving force behind the most consequential renewal of American economic statecraft since the Second World War. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the 72nd Secretary of State of the United States, Secretary Marco Rubio. [applause]
