Directing public money to technology for moving data between AI processors confirms official recognition of where the sector's bottleneck sits.
The technical fact behind it is simple to state and expensive to solve. Traffic between processors grows faster than conventional electrical connections can carry, and in a large cluster the limit stops being the chip and becomes the cable.
The period gathered evidence of the same reading on other fronts: foundries racing toward co-packaged optics, a network manufacturer doubling switching capacity in one generation, and national infrastructure plans connecting data centres.
Interconnect is also a control point concentrated in few hands, which explains the industrial policy interest: whoever owns the connection sets the pace for everyone depending on it.
For operations that only rent capacity, the effect arrives slowly, as cost per task rather than as a product announcement.