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by LOGAN McVEY
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South Carolina’s manufacturing economy did not happen by accident. It took decades of investment, workforce development and a bet that this state was a place where serious companies could build serious things. That bet has paid off. Today, major employers across automotive, aerospace and industrial sectors call South Carolina home, and the jobs they support are ones families across this state count on.
That foundation is now at risk in ways that not enough people are paying attention to. Artificial intelligence is going to reshape the industries South Carolina depends on over the next decade. The companies that lead in AI will have real advantages in how they design products, run supply chains and win defense contracts. The question is whether those companies are American ones or Chinese ones. Right now, the answer is not guaranteed.
China is in a race to build the most powerful AI systems in the world, and the biggest hurdle standing in its way is access to advanced American-made computer chips. Those chips are the engine of modern AI. Without them, you cannot train the systems that will define the next generation of technology. The U.S. has put export controls in place to keep our best chips out of Chinese hands, and by China’s own admission, it is working. China’s top AI executives have said publicly that blocked chip access is their biggest obstacle.
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But here is the problem. Those controls were put in place by the executive branch, which means they can be loosened or reversed whenever an administration decides a trade deal is more important. We have already seen it happen. That is not a stable foundation for a long-term strategy.
Congress needs to write these protections into law. Two bills, the AI OVERWATCH Act and the SAFE Chips Act, would do exactly that. They would establish permanent, statutory export controls covering not just chips but the full hardware ecosystem China would need to build its own AI industry: the memory chips, the server equipment, the manufacturing tools. Passing them as part of the National Defense Authorization Act this year is the most direct path to making them stick.
South Carolina has seen what happens when America loses its edge in a key industry. We watched semiconductor manufacturing go from 40 percent of the global market to 12 percent over a few decades. Solar panels, batteries, electronics: entire industries moved overseas, and the jobs went with them. AI infrastructure is the next wave of investment, and it represents trillions of dollars in data centers, hardware and supporting jobs. We should be fighting to make sure that investment lands in states like ours, not in China.
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This is also a national security issue, and South Carolina knows that better than most. South Carolina has one of the highest concentrations of veterans in the country. When America’s security is on the line, South Carolinians feel it. The country that leads in AI leads in defense. AI will determine how wars are fought, how threats are detected and how critical infrastructure is protected. Letting China close the gap on us in AI is not just an economic problem. It is a threat to the security infrastructure this state helps support.
Senator Tim Scott, as Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is in a position to help get this done. South Carolina needs its delegation fighting to get strong export control language into the NDAA and holding the line against any pressure to water it down in the name of a short-term trade agreement.
We built this advantage. We should not give it away.
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Logan McVey is the former Chief Policy Officer with the City of Charleston, prior to that he was a Trade and Economic Issue staffer on Capitol Hill for multiple members of the South Carolina Delegation.
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