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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

#101

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Zigurd wrote: post #58
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> TBF China hasn't got a lot of choice.

I wouldn't doubt that this is true. But individuals can make choices, especially mobile techies.

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

#102

Post by seanmcdirmid »

somenameforme wrote: post #86
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don’t be surprised when dozens of African and Asian countries choose China over Western interests if push comes to shove. And don't be surprised if they don't. Even if China has a lot of frenemies on its border in Asia, every country in Asia has some fear over China, and this often pushes them to improve their relationship with the USA (e.g. Vietnam). Even Russia and North Korea have some antagonism with China. Non…

I see China's soft power quite a bit differently. China has an increasingly large presence throughout all of Asia. There are obviously the government initiatives but in many ways the non-governmental stuff is far more visible. 1.4 billion people + rapidly growing middle class = Chinese are absolutely everywhere. Chinese tourists are playing an increasingly large role in the economies of nations throughout Asia, even…

Asian countries do not dislike Chinese people and culture: they have had large communities of Chinese immigrants for a long time, they don't mind the tourism and like the students as well. But that says nothing about whether they like the Chinese government or not: be it the Communists, Nationalists, or Qing dynasty, that's where the friction begins.

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

#103

Post by nine_zeros »

kypro wrote: post #64
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…

Yes, you're completely right. Not that I'm in favour of the wealth inequality in the US, but in some ways it's one of the US's biggest assets. There are a lot of people in the US who are so excessively wealthy they're willing to throw money at moon-shot companies (and sometimes simply ideas) that will almost certainly never yield them a return. You don't get companies like Space X and Blue Origin without extremely am…

This has parellels in the music industry. A British band has "made it" only if they have made it in America.

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

#104

Post by darkteflon »

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…

I get your point, but the word “sovereign” carries very particular implications that make it a poor choice by the interviewee in this context. I think it’s uncharitable to characterise GP’s argument as a strawman.

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

#105

Post by kypro »

prottog wrote: post #83
kypro wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you're completely right. Not that I'm in favour of the wealth inequality in the US, but in some ways it's one of the US's biggest assets. There are a lot of people in the US who are so excessively wealthy they're willing to throw money at moon-shot companies (and sometimes simply ideas) that will almost certainly never yield them a return. You don't get companies like Space X and Blue Origin without extremely am…

I'm in favor of a system of free(ish) markets operating well, with big fortunes made from value creation and not rent-seeking behavior. If that results in wealth inequality, so be it; the old idea that a rising tide lifts all boats has not been invalidated yet.

I agree, but I think a lot of people would argue the rising tide in the US doesn't come anywhere near to lifting all boats. If you're smart and educated then US is an incredible place to live and work. If you're not then life in the US seems quite harsh by Northern European standards.

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

#106

Post by robocat »

scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #98
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…

I just interviewed at Ocado and I agree that it looks like they have it together. But then they’re outsourcing a chunk of the software to my country so not sure if that reflects well on the UK. Another one worth mentioning a bit closer to my field is CMR - a surgical robotics company. They’re blowing enormous capital trying to conquer Europe and it might be working. Their tech is convincing and they have good showman…

> But it’s not visionary - just building on many incremental improvements and respectful of the thorough research and validation required

That is the core idea of most successful businesses. The same thing done very quickly is called a startup. “Visionary” is for government pork barrels, or wealthy investors that want to gamble or gain status, with the most likely outcome of becoming less wealthy.

I think building a successful business is best achieved by a series of smaller steps, with each step up-and-to-the-right. Visionary businesses that have a single wallface/cliff to climb have a horrific level of failure.

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

#107

Post by robocat »

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…

> the treasury feels that spending money [] is always wrong

Governments virtually always make poor tech investment decisions. It is depressing watching my New Zealand government throw away serious coin on poor technology investment decisions.

Business friendly infrastructure is fertiliser which would cause businesses to grow like weeds. Simplify government mandated interactions, and lower risks caused by unnecessary government regulations. Create simple rules for businesses to be founded. Reduce red tape in areas like payroll, insurance, tax, employment law, etcetera.

In New Zealand, government red tape is not too bad, as compared to many other countries. But it is still a heavy burden for a founder, with a lot of unnecessary requirements. The barriers need to be lowered because creating a business is hard enough without the extra burden of a bunch of government regulated crap.

I’m not saying delete all rules, I am saying prioritise rules and provide default systems that make it easy to follow necessary rules correctly. Remove needless rules and make it easy to conform to the rules; by providing good resources, providing good default software, and by having some rules staggered so that they are only applied after relevant targets are exceeded (a few years, number of employees, total revenue, whatever).

Keep the important rules, provide necessary protections for employees, provide social fallback for failure (ACC, welfare, health systems). The limited liability company was an amazing innovation a long time ago, because it removed a bunch of risks.

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

#108

Post by jschveibinz »

UK investment in R&D, largest ever, is £39.8 billion R&D budget for the period 2022-2025:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-announces-plan...

US federal annual budget for R&D for 2022 is $180 billion:

https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf22322

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

#110

Post by TMWNN »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #78
origin_path wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indepe…

> The US tech sector was primed and bootstrapped almost entirely without government money This is mostly wrong, if you read the enterpreneurial state.

origin_path is correct. US government money (i.e., defense spending) postwar largely went into directly military-applicable areas like aircraft and missiles. Bell Labs didn't create the transistor using defense money. TI and Intel didn't create the microprocessor using defense money. In turn, the major postwar defense advances—hydrogen bomb, nuclear submarine, ICBMs, satellite recon—were all developed pre-microprocessor; only stealth technology is a post-1970 development that would probably not be possible without massive computing power. ARPANET was one of many separate networking projects being designed around the US, and the others were corporate and/or academic.

That's not to say that US tech companies did not benefit from government spending; they did. But government was a big customer, and not the magic sugar daddy without which Silicon Valley and Route 128 and the Texas Triangle would not exist.

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