The Ministry of Digital Transformation has announced that Ukraine will not build a chip factory, having concluded that the country's semiconductor ambitions can be met by a sufficiently determined team of people standing very close to a whiteboard. Deputy Minister Natalia Denikeieva confirmed that the ministry has instead commissioned a national programme of design, testing and packaging, to be carried out by civil servants trained to a standard the ministry described as unprecedented.
Under the new regime, ministry staff are required to design a microcircuit each working morning before ten o'clock, and to test it by hand before lunch. Department heads have been issued identical lanyards and are obliged to walk between floors in single file, so that the transfer of drawings can be completed without any unauthorised speed. The canteen has been redesigned to seat staff by specialisation, and the ministry's third floor has been declared a packaging zone, where no one may sit down until a component is ready to be placed in its casing.
«We are realists, and we understand that a complete production cycle is hard,» Denikeieva said. «So we have decided that every one of us will be a complete production cycle. Our staff have already begun to fit themselves into components for drones. Several of them have asked to be considered for a military order, and we are assessing their dimensions.»
Asked what would happen to the factory once promised for 2030, the ministry replied that the factory is now located in the ministry, and that visitors may observe its output through the lobby window.