# Can Policy Solve AI’s Chipflation?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughts-on-the-market-980853/can-policy-solve-ai-s-chipflation
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughts-on-the-market-980853/can-policy-solve-ai-s-chipflation.md
Podcast: [Thoughts on the Market](https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughts-on-the-market-980853)
Published: 2026-06-17T20:30:00+00:00
Episode link: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/rss.art19.com/episodes/6b5584db-f5ff-477e-ad17-3b7d2f1a2f65.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0
Audio file: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/rss.art19.com/episodes/6b5584db-f5ff-477e-ad17-3b7d2f1a2f65.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0
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Duration seconds: 260

## Resource

AI’s appetite for memory has turned chips into an inflationary factor. Our U.S. Public Policy Strategist Ariana Salvatore looks at what policymakers could do to reduce that pressure. Read more insights from Morgan Stanley. ----- Transcript ----- Ariana Salvatore: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Ariana Salvatore, Morgan Stanley's U.S. Public Policy Strategist.   Today, I'll be talking about chipflation and what policy tools can or can't be used to address the memory bottleneck.  It's Wednesday, June 17th, at 10am in New York.  Last week, you heard my colleague Shawn Kim talk about chipflation and the surging cost of memory. Today, I'll get into what policymakers can and can't do about it.  As listeners will know, memory chips are becoming an increasingly strategic resource because AI infrastructure depends on them. And when a resource becomes strategic, governments tend to get involved. The challenge is that policy can help at the margin but probably can't solve the problem quickly.  There are three reasons for that. First, many U.S. policy tools all take time. Direct subsidies, tax credits, procurement guarantees, and faster permitting are all things that can support new fabrication plants, packaging facilities, and testing capacity. But memory supply is not going to appear overnight. This new capacity has to be built, equipped, qualified, and ramped – and that process can take years.  Second, China may be able to add some supply in conventional memory markets, but not enough to close the broader gap created by AI demand. That's especially true for high bandwidth memory, the more strategic type of memory for frontier AI systems. Supply there still remains highly concentrated, technically complex, and difficult to scale.  T…

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