CONTRIBUTED ARTICLE

The following was written by Zakhar Salamakha, a sophomore at Whitehall High School, as part of the annual student essay competition run by the Can We Talk? student dialogue initiative. Can We Talk? is a program of the Committee of Seventy, Pennsylvania’s oldest and largest good government/civic education nonprofit.

The students responded to the following prompt: “In this anniversary year, how well do you think the American people and their government are doing at upholding equality, human rights and ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’? Whether you think the picture is positive, negative or mixed, please provide a few examples to support your judgment.”

This essay was awarded honorable mention, and the author received $100 as a prize.

BY ZAKHAR SALAMAKHA

Two hundred and fifty years ago, Thomas Jefferson and a committee of a few other leaders sat in a Philadelphia room to draft a document that changed the world. The most important part of the Declaration of Independence was that it broke from a government that treated people unequally.

Today, in 2026, those political ties have been replaced by digital ones. While the Founders spoke of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” a modern interpretation of these rights must recognize a new reality: in the 21st century, these unalienable rights are increasingly powered by semiconductors.

My judgment on how well we are upholding these ideals is mixed, but leaning toward the positive side, due to our self-reliance on technology.

In 1776, the colonists realized they could not be truly free if they depended on the British Crown for their manufacturing and trade. Today, we face a similar situation with chip design and manufacturing.

If “Liberty” means the ability to govern ourselves, then our current effort to bring semiconductor fabrication back to American soil — through initiatives like the CHIPS Act — is a modern way of showing “consent of the governed.” When we rely on far-away, sometimes unstable powers for the silicon chips that run our hospitals (Life), our communication (Liberty) and our economy (the Pursuit of Happiness), we risk a new kind of dependence which is what the founders tried to avoid.

However, I would say that the results are “mixed,” since there is still a huge gap between who has technology, and who doesn’t. If “all men are created equal,” yet only some have access to the advanced computing power necessary to succeed in a modern economy, we are failing the Preamble’s promise.

Chip design isn’t just about faster phones; it’s about democratizing information. When we rely on others to handle our digital world, we are giving up the right to be in charge of our own lives. By investing in domestic chip architecture and hardware security, we aren’t just building electronics, we are protecting the independence of our private data and our national infrastructure.

The Founders were individuals who reached for a radical idea of self-reliance. As a student in 2026, I see the semiconductor as the most important tool for freedom. Just as the printing press was the technology of the first American Revolution, the integrated circuit is the technology of our current era.

To truly uphold the Declaration’s legacy today, we must ensure that the “Greatest Sentence Ever Written” is supported by the hardware necessary to keep us a free and independent people. If we control our technology, we control our future. That is the ultimate pursuit of happiness.