In an attempt to tap into a previously unexploited national resource, the U.S. Treasury Department Monday unveiled a bold initiative to directly harness the staggering disappointment generated by the country’s declining overseas AI chip sales.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen described the plan as “the next logical step for American innovation,” after supply chain bottlenecks, rising chip competition abroad, and a widely publicized incident where a top-tier processor mistook a photo of a cat for the Sri Lankan ambassador.
“We are currently experiencing unprecedented levels of collective letdown,” Yellen said, addressing reporters in front of a heavily air-conditioned warehouse filled with unsold semiconductors. “Instead of letting all that disappointment dissipate uncollected into the atmosphere, Treasury will now trap, store, and monetize it, much as Norway manages its oil reserves.”
Treasury officials detailed a four-phase harvest process: first, white-collar workers at major chip manufacturers will be photographed with their quarterly losses. These images, specifically engineered to induce feelings of resigned disillusionment, will be broadcast globally to other export markets. “Our research found disappointment rates are highest at the moment someone refreshes an earnings PDF,” explained Lead Disappointment Analyst Dr. Erica Toner. “We’re installing sensors on every desk from Austin to San Jose.”
Further, the plan calls for disappointment to be extracted using what the Treasury described as “emotional fracking.” Prototype devices—a sort of reverse aromatherapy diffuser—have been placed in executive boardrooms to absorb sighs, forlorn glances, and the disappointed head-shakes typically sparked by export data graphs. The condensed disappointment, currently quantified in units of “sighawatts,” will be stored at Fort Knox alongside the nation’s gold and the collective despair from past Olympic curling results.
According to preliminary studies by the Congressional Budget Office, disappointment levels could soon rival the energy output of West Virginia. “If this works, disappointment could power up to 37 percent of federal government Zoom calls,” said Undersecretary of Sustainable Malaise Frank Benson. “It may even heat Capitol Hill’s onboarding seminars for new, underwhelmed interns.”
Reactions among industry insiders have been mixed. “It’s about time we started getting something out of this mess,” said Nvidia spokesperson Carl Oakley, briskly wrapping a USB cable around his wrist. Huawei, for its part, issued a statement expressing concern that U.S. disappointment exports would “flood the market, threatening domestic supplies of dejection.”
Environmental groups, meanwhile, have raised alarms. According to a leaked EPA memo, mishandled disappointment could depress native populations of hope and collective optimism, already endangered since March 2020.
Still, Yellen remains optimistic. “In the 21st century, disappointment may be America’s greatest surplus. And with enough disappointment, there’s nothing this nation can’t almost but not quite pull off.”
At press time, shipments of disappointment futures were already being shorted on Wall Street, as traders eagerly anticipated new lows.
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