Silicon is obsolete, monolithic CPUs are obsolete, suppling high voltage AC to each machine is obsolete.

In engineering obsolete means "it works".

As one senior developer put it to me once: "legacy is the stuff that already works."

One question though, why silicon? I understand why you'd consider all the other ones obsolete, but what modern alternative is there to silicon based integrated circuits?

Is this a change in policy?

I thought we had to police the internet to stop child porn on months with an 'R' in them and to stop terrorism in months without an 'R'?