There is quite a bit of domestic fabrication in the US but Intel is really the only cutting edge player anymore. Many of these other fabs are not really interes

There is quite a bit of domestic fabrication in the US but Intel is really the only cutting edge player anymore. Many of these other fabs are not really interested in changing their processes (in fact, they are heavily disincentivized to!) because their margins are not particularly high and so being low cost and high reliability are their only goals. This can be extremely frustrating to people knew to the field since, after toiling away for years and years on your PhD, everyone is telling you not to change anything and to just keep things working as they are. If you get into Intel, you might get to do some really cool work, but that's quite a risk to bank your entire career on IMO (especially given that nobody pays that well either). So, yes and no. Fab is neat but realistically if you like chips I'd really encourage you to go for VLSI and/or some other EE specialty since the US does have plenty of high paying demand from many companies for these positions.