No country can build a chip alone, partnerships are essential: Foreign Secretary Misri
India's Foreign Secretary told an industry gathering at SEMICON India 2026 that no single country can build a semiconductor chip alone, describing the chip value chain as spread across design, equipment, fabrication, materials, and assembly hubs in different countries.
The address flagged the risk of global over-reliance on "a handful of countries, sometimes a single one" for rare earth processing and advanced-node chip manufacturing, without naming any country directly.
International partnerships were presented as an industrial-diversification imperative rather than a confrontational stance toward any one supplier nation.
Global benchmarks cited included the US CHIPS Act's over $50 billion commitment, sustained Chinese investment in the sector, Europe's ambition to capture a fifth of global chip manufacturing capacity, and India's own semiconductor mission.
The Semiconductor Value Chain and Concentration Risk
A modern semiconductor's production spans several distinct, geographically concentrated stages: chip design (electronic design automation tools and IP, concentrated in the US), fabrication equipment (lithography systems, dominated by the Netherlands' ASML and Japan), wafer fabrication (dominated by Taiwan's TSMC and South Korea's Samsung for advanced nodes), specialty materials and rare-earth-linked inputs, and assembly, testing, and packaging (concentrated in Southeast Asia and China).
Key Details
- Taiwan alone accounts for the large majority of global advanced-node (sub-10nm) chip fabrication capacity through TSMC, making it a single point of failure often cited in global supply-chain risk assessments.
- China dominates global rare-earth mining and, more significantly, rare-earth processing and refining capacity, giving it outsized leverage over inputs used in chip manufacturing, magnets, and electronics.
- The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent geopolitical tensions (including export controls on advanced chips and chipmaking equipment) exposed this concentration risk, prompting major economies to pursue "friend-shoring" and diversification strategies.
The Foreign Secretary's core argument, that chip supply chains are inherently multinational and that concentration anywhere in the chain is a systemic vulnerability, directly reflects this value-chain structure, with the unnamed "handful of countries" language read as an oblique reference to China's dominance in rare earths and advanced processing.
India Semiconductor Mission (ISM)
The India Semiconductor Mission was approved by the Union Cabinet in December 2021 as a specialised, independent business division under the Digital India Corporation, operating under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), to build a sustainable semiconductor and display ecosystem in India.
The Foreign Secretary's reference to "India's own SEMICON India programme" points to this mission, and his call to build "with India, not merely in India" reflects the government's push for India to move beyond assembly/packaging into design and fabrication through international technology partnerships rather than purely domestic capacity-building.
Critical Minerals and Rare Earth Elements
Rare earth elements (REEs) are a group of 17 chemically similar elements (the 15 lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium) essential for magnets, semiconductors, electric vehicle motors, and defence electronics. India's Ministry of Mines identified a list of 30 critical minerals in 2023, including REEs, based on their economic importance and supply-risk profile.
Key Details
- India launched the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM) in January 2025, approved for a seven-year period (2024-25 to 2030-31) with a proposed outlay of ₹16,300 crore plus an expected ₹18,000 crore investment from public sector undertakings and other stakeholders.
- The mission targets domestic production of at least 15 critical minerals, including lithium, graphite, potash, and rare earth elements, alongside 1,200 planned domestic exploration projects by 2030-31.
- China holds a dominant global share of rare-earth processing capacity even where raw ore is mined elsewhere, since processing (separation and refining) is far more capital- and technology-intensive than mining.
The Foreign Secretary's warning about single-source dependence on rare earths for chipmaking connects directly to India's own critical-minerals push under the NCMM, positioning domestic mineral security as a necessary complement to semiconductor manufacturing ambitions.
- The India Semiconductor Mission was approved in December 2021 with a ₹76,000 crore incentive outlay (up to 50% fiscal support).
- As of late 2025, roughly ten ISM-linked projects worth about ₹1.6 lakh crore had been approved.
- The National Critical Mineral Mission (approved January 2025) covers 2024-25 to 2030-31 with a proposed outlay of ₹16,300 crore.
- India's critical minerals list (2023) names 30 minerals, including rare earth elements (REEs).
- The US CHIPS and Science Act committed over $50 billion in semiconductor incentives.