The wires inside a chip are the most overlooked component in electronics.

Interconnects have always had one job: moving signals from A to B. This talk argues they can do far more. What if an interconnect could use a chip’s own waste heat to automatically increase its bandwidth? What if a passive circuit could reroute signals through random paths — and yet reconstruct them perfectly, with no active control? What if a conducting wire could be folded and unfolded many times — and never break? All of this becomes possible when we stop treating interconnects as fixed infrastructure — and rebuild them with purpose. The reach is pervasive. Engineered Electromagnetic interconnects could help solve some of the hardest open problems in AI data center efficiency, deployable robotics, and hardware security.

This talk presents concrete examples of passive interconnect structures that go far beyond signal transport — and make the case that this is an underexplored frontier for the future of electronic and communication systems.