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UK Has ‘No Chance in Hell’ of Making Its Own Tech Champs: ARM Founder

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Re: UK Has ‘No Chance in Hell’ of Making Its Own Tech Champs: ARM Founder

#51

Post by radicalbyte »

Etheryte wrote: post #24
SilverBirch wrote: post #4

It sounds to me like he doesn't actually say that. In the article: >The UK has “no chance in hell” of becoming technologically sovereign Well which is it, having our own Tech champs or being technologically sovereign? Because they're totally different things. To be honest I'm not sure any country apart from China stands any chance of becoming technologically sovereign. Like what does that mean? Do we need to mine our…

This is not how the article approached technologically sovereign at all, as is this is just a strawman argument. No one proposed that sovereignty is about producing everything from scratch yourself. Here's the actual excerpt: > One question countries have to ask themselves if whether they have all the critical technologies needed to run a country and its economy. > “The answer for Britain” is “absolutely no, there is…

Why would anyone expect that from a small country? If it was part of the EU - yeah you should expect the EU to be technically sovereign. But not a small island who decided to leave (so they could make bankers richer and the poor poorer).

Re: UK Has ‘No Chance in Hell’ of Making Its Own Tech Champs: ARM Founder

#52

Post by DoughnutHole »

Veen wrote: post #48
t43562 wrote: post #44

Well, the nerds aren't the super rich here. It's still about public schools and old money and people who studied law or the classics or at least graduated from Oxbridge. The big money in software is all from the world of finance and there's nothing tech about them - no heart or vision except how to make a faster trade. So who will foster a company that's not going to make money for 10 years? I think there's also an a…

> The nerds aren't super-rich here. It's still about public schools and old money and people who studied law or the classics At tech companies? I think not.

I don't think he's talking about tech employees - he's talking about capitalists.

The tech industry in the US is mature enough that there plenty of "rich nerds" who made their fortune in the early days of the industry and today invest in tech startups. Hardly anyone with the money to jumpstart a startup in the UK has any interest or involvement in tech as an industry.

The capitalist class in the UK is very old and very established, and likes to invest in old and established industries. If they're not just passively extracting rent from their assets they might go as far as to let their friends in the city play with more interesting financial instruments. Pumping money into different probably doomed startups in the hope that they'll land a unicorn isn't really their style.

Re: UK Has ‘No Chance in Hell’ of Making Its Own Tech Champs: ARM Founder

#53

Post by uup »

coredog64 wrote: post #43
uup wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China also has a security agreement with the Solomon Islands. While a tiny nation in and of itself, the use of the islands by the Chinese navy allow for quite a bit of force projection into the pacific. It would be very hard, for instance, for the U.S. to use their navy to defend Australia or Taiwan.

The international airport in Honiara is called “Henderson Field” and not whatever name the Japanese gave their airfield. Based on historical precedents, it might be premature to say that a naval base in the Solomons means game over for Australia.

No one knows how a military conflict between China and Australia would end. I can’t imagine it helps Australia to have a major naval military installation between Australia and one of its major allies however.

Re: UK Has ‘No Chance in Hell’ of Making Its Own Tech Champs: ARM Founder

#54

Post by seanmcdirmid »

smcl wrote: post #38
hosh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. China has been building out their railroad net for years now, both internally and reaching outwards 2. Those synergize with the loans. They are not "some" loans 3. Cultural exports have been going on for a while, though it has not been as successful as South Korea or Japan 4. China has been seriously wooing back Western-educated citizens to head R&D in a variety areas, for the past ten years or so. Quality-of-life…

Among other things, right now I don't think Quality-of-life is particularly high if you run the risk of suddenly being locked down in place or thrown in a covid hospital (friend of mine went through both, sounded very unpleasant indeed)

Ya, China's Zero COVID policy has reversed this trend for sure. It isn't just getting lockdown that people are worried about, but the inability to freely travel without a long quarantine at the end of the trip.

Re: UK Has ‘No Chance in Hell’ of Making Its Own Tech Champs: ARM Founder

#55

Post by registeredcorn »

shubb wrote: post #46
Etheryte wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not how the article approached technologically sovereign at all, as is this is just a strawman argument. No one proposed that sovereignty is about producing everything from scratch yourself. Here's the actual excerpt: > One question countries have to ask themselves if whether they have all the critical technologies needed to run a country and its economy. > “The answer for Britain” is “absolutely no, there is…

Do you mind explaining more clearly the difference between your understanding of what the article means, and what the GP wrote? They seem pretty similar?

I'm in the same boat as you.

I'm not sure exactly what, "whether they have all the critical technologies needed to run a country and its economy", means.

When I think "critical technologies" I think of a lot of what SilverBirch was bringing up.

When I think of, critical technologies [...] to run a country and its economy, I think of things like: EMS, traffic lights, the stock market, electricity, etc.

Similarly, saying something like "economy" could either mean, "businesses specific to Britain", or, "the 'economic climate' of Britain, which is influenced by a global market".

Example:

Can a technology firm start up in Britain? Absolutely. They might even do well, depending on how they're run.

Can a technology firm start up in Britain and immediately sustain the current economy that British Citizens are currently accustomed to? That's a bit of a taller order.

It's hard to get a feel for exactly what is meant by how the statement was worded. Any country can compete, but without the global resources provided by businesses that exist across the world, any local-only upstart is going to struggle to be competitive in any part of any market.

Re: UK Has ‘No Chance in Hell’ of Making Its Own Tech Champs: ARM Founder

#56

Post by Cederfjard »

AtomicOrbital wrote: post #8

For newcomers ARM cpu was/is designed in the UK ... Say nothing about Alan Turing who first conceived of how digital computation can happen using hardware then went on to help design and build one of the first computers and yes he coded it to use a Bayesian algorithm... Not to mention Thomas Bayes, De Morgan, Charles Baggage and Boole of boolean logic fame just for starters

”Charles Baggage” made me giggle a bit.

Re: UK Has ‘No Chance in Hell’ of Making Its Own Tech Champs: ARM Founder

#57

Post by bobthepanda »

registeredcorn wrote: post #55
shubb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind explaining more clearly the difference between your understanding of what the article means, and what the GP wrote? They seem pretty similar?

I'm in the same boat as you. I'm not sure exactly what, "whether they have all the critical technologies needed to run a country and its economy", means. When I think "critical technologies" I think of a lot of what SilverBirch was bringing up. When I think of, critical technologies [...] to run a country and its economy , I think of things like: EMS, traffic lights, the stock market, electricity, etc. Similarly, say…

Yeah, even something “simple” like a replacement of Visa or Mastercard is quite complicated.

Re: UK Has ‘No Chance in Hell’ of Making Its Own Tech Champs: ARM Founder

#58

Post by Zigurd »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #54
smcl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among other things, right now I don't think Quality-of-life is particularly high if you run the risk of suddenly being locked down in place or thrown in a covid hospital (friend of mine went through both, sounded very unpleasant indeed)

Ya, China's Zero COVID policy has reversed this trend for sure. It isn't just getting lockdown that people are worried about, but the inability to freely travel without a long quarantine at the end of the trip.

TBF China hasn't got a lot of choice. They do not have a highly effective vaccine. Millions of people in China would die if COVID were allowed to spread. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Re: UK Has ‘No Chance in Hell’ of Making Its Own Tech Champs: ARM Founder

#59

Post by origin_path »

DoughnutHole wrote: post #52
Veen wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The nerds aren't super-rich here. It's still about public schools and old money and people who studied law or the classics At tech companies? I think not.

I don't think he's talking about tech employees - he's talking about capitalists. The tech industry in the US is mature enough that there plenty of "rich nerds" who made their fortune in the early days of the industry and today invest in tech startups. Hardly anyone with the money to jumpstart a startup in the UK has any interest or involvement in tech as an industry. The capitalist class in the UK is very old and ve…

I'm not sure that's true. There are quite a few venture capital firms in the UK that invest in the software world.

The problem is more that, especially in the past 10 years or so, the sheer number of failures you need to absorb in order to get one success seems out of whack to the historical norm. The VC firms in the UK and rest of Europe (really, everywhere that's not California) can only afford relatively small investments for relatively large chunks of equity. To get VC firms on the scale of a16z or YC you need to have at least one mega hit, ideally several, and then you make big investments in hundreds of ropey startups in the hope that another one comes good. That's the US approach. The UK hasn't had an equivalent of a Google or Netscape that could kickstart whole new VC funds.

The past 10 years feels especially poor for non-US VC because so much money flooded into the market that there are dozens of venture backed "tech firms" for every obvious idea, so companies outside the US just get outspent into oblivion. How on earth would a UK firm have competed against Uber for example? The sums of money burned were astronomical. Blockchain firms also sucked up vast amounts of talent and capital in the UK due to its adjacency to finance, but with relatively little to show for it all.

It feels like in the era where the big US funds were made, companies were risky but still on a reasonable scale. Google/Facebook etc became profitable within a small number of years. You didn't get funds willing to pump money into firms for a decade+ with no ROI in sight.

Re: UK Has ‘No Chance in Hell’ of Making Its Own Tech Champs: ARM Founder

#60

Post by origin_path »

pasabagi wrote: post #3

Reading between the lines of his quote, my guess is he's angling for some cash from the government, by securitizing the tech sector. It won't work, because the treasury feels that spending money, like eating people, is always wrong. It won't cost any politicians anything when the bits and pieces of the UK tech sector go down the pipes, because their fortunes rest entirely on house prices, and the opinions of the fine…

This is the same Treasury that just had its top civil servant and minister replaced, specifically in order to allow a massive splurge of borrowing and money printing on an ahistoric scale? That Treasury?

The UK's problem is not government unwillingness to spend money. The US tech sector was primed and bootstrapped almost entirely without government money after the wall fell, and even before that it was largely independent of government funding. And there just isn't the same culture there of people expecting grants or handouts from the government - even in the cases where the US tech industry was helped by USG spending it was all via military/intelligence research projects.

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