Last summer, Foxconn announced that it would buy buildings across Wisconsin and turn them into “innovation centers” as part of its record-breaking $4.5 billion tax subsidy agreement with the state. The initial agreement with Wisconsin had been for a large-screen LCD manufacturing facility, but by 2018, the company had downsized the factory to a far smaller type. That factory would employ only a tiny fraction of the 13,000 people Foxconn had promised to hire, and the company’s plan to make up the shortfall was to hire people to develop an as-yet undefined “AI 8K+5G ecosystem.” These employees would work on Foxconn’s main campus in Mount Pleasant as well as in the innovation centers scattered across the state, which were supposed to open...
