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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

#111

Post by TMWNN »

sgt101 wrote: post #74

I've spoken with Hauser about this - his point (in 2012 when I had the conversation) was that the UK simply did not have access to a market big enough to support a global champion. I said (given the date) but what about the EU and he said no, because in fact the single market is fractured and filled with barriers. I asked well, what about French and German Tech companies? Hauser looked at me and said : yes.

>I asked well, what about French and German Tech companies?

>Hauser looked at me and said : yes.

What does "Yes" mean?

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

#112

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

robocat wrote: post #106
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

True - my point being that some of these UK companies are tackling more complex problems by methodically breaking them down.

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

#114

Post by oblio »

distortedsignal wrote: post #88
oblio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've spoken with Hauser about this - his point (in 2012 when I had the conversation) was that the UK simply did not have access to a market big enough to support a global champion. Samsung, Hyundai/Kia, TSMC, Toyota, etc. A lot of local brands have figured out that you can bootstrap a product locally and then just focus relentlessly on the American market, after which you can practically conquer the world. Asian co…

The South Korean companies that you're thinking of (Samsung, LG, Hyundai) might have had a leg-up from some friendly government policies. Check out the history of Chaebol [1] in S. Korea. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol

Doesn't matter. So do the zaibatsu of Japan.

There are European companies that are just as big, in various fields, they just don't have the same mindset.

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

#115

Post by t43562 »

origin_path wrote: post #59
DoughnutHole wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inv…

I think this just means that the UK VCs are far far far too late. And they're late for some reason - it doesn't take insight to follow a well established trend.

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

#116

Post by pasabagi »

TMWNN wrote: post #110
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-microproces…

I think the US is probably the worst model for any state to follow, because it's just so different to every other state on the planet. The UK's historical position as global hegemon pushes the UK towards maintaining institutional attitudes and policies that only make sense if you are the global superpower, and the success of the US compounds this tendency, but the problem is, the UK is a middle-size state that just has none of the inherent positional or material resources the US has, so it results in lackluster economic growth. Which is what we've seen in the post-war era.

Trying to repeat the Silicon valley, when you have none of the massive geographic and historical advantages Silicon valley had, makes no sense, and I wish the UK would stop trying to copy what it cannot be (the massive global empire) and started trying to copy what it can be (all of the dynamic middle-size economies, like SK, Germany, or even Finland).

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

#117

Post by pasabagi »

f1shy wrote: post #41
im3w1l wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, People want to live (and buy housing) where there are good jobs.

> People want to live (and buy housing) where there are good jobs. That sentence is fundamental.

If demand is what is driving prices, sure. Except the government has shown time and time again there are mechanisms (e.g reducing stamp duty) that can prop up prices while demand is weak. If you look at the last few years of housing policy, you see a picture of increasingly dramatic measures to artificially inflate house prices, independent of the actual value of the houses to the people who live in them.

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

#118

Post by sdnas211 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #57
registeredcorn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It isn't simple because Mastercard literally runs the interbank payment network for the UK.

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

#119

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

marc_rich wrote: post #113

America gave us OpenAI. The UK gave us Stable Diffusion.

I had a look into that claim. The original work and most of the research heavy lifting seems to have been done at the LMU Munich. The main British participation appears to have been Stability AI lending computing power.

https://github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion

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

#120

Post by ETH_start »

bobthepanda wrote: post #82
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…

I would say even China isn’t technologically sovereign, depending on how broad the definition of technology is. As a general example, even the Chinese attempt at building a commercial airliner still uses Western engines and other avionics.

It's easy to be technologically sovereign: just give up any technologies you can't produce domestically. Isolated tribes in Papua New Guinea manage to be completely self-sufficient, to give an example.

What's impossible is staying at the technological forefront while being technologically sovereign.

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