Live data from Hacker News

EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

electronicsweekly.com

221–230 of 318 posts

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#221
post #216
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese government attempting to pick winners is the best hope the chip embargo has; Xi Jinping is ironically the person best placed to cause it to succeed. The issue is that a Manhattan projet styled effort followed up by turning technology over to private industry is something that China could very well do and would probably be effective. Let alone the silly idea of challenging multiple countries simultaneously…

I would just emphasize something obvious about different cultures. Culturally, China is really long term while the West culture is anxious (not bad, just different) and looking for short term results. China does not have problems embracing challenging and strategic endeavours knowing that the result will come out eventually.

People say stuff like that all the time, then the most free market economy does well in the long term. Culture is important, but mainly as far as it permits people to freely help themselves prosper.

The West is made up of countries that often have 40%+ of their economy made up by government spending, ie, spending that wouldn't happen under a free market. That is far more a problem as far as raw economic outcomes than long- or short- term cultures. China will collapse if someone high up in the government attempts a 2nd Leap Forward, culture matters a lot in whether they tolerate a bureaucracy with that sort of power (history hint - don't tolerate that sort of power in the bureaucracy).

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#222
post #155
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ASML isn't guarding profound insights revealed by the gods requiring some sort of eternal liver pecking sacrifice to obtain. If the EU plays hardball to too great an extent, other countries will replicate the research. China will already have started their attempts. It isn't crazy to expect them to achieve success single handedly. If all of Asia starts mucking in the EU will get crushed. The EU does not have a track…

> The EU does not have a track record of staying ahead when they tangle with Asians for tech manufacturing supremacy. Depends on your definition of "tech", see e.g. Airbus.

>see e.g. Airbus

One single successful company can't sustain the tech economy of a continent.

Even if they lost the commercial aviation crown after Boeing's flops, the US still has far more local champions with insane margins successful in other critical areas (military, web services, mobile, cloud, GPUs, AI, CPUs, etc) than the EU could ever dream of.

I'm sure working at Airbus or ASML is nice but those two companies can't employ all of EU's tech workers and fund EU's monetary deficits, especially since both are registered in the NL tax heaven.

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isnt some 50ppl startup There are long ass supply chains

The software engineers don't realize that cutting-edge integrated hardware is actually harder than typing a bunch of letters into a terminal. lol.

That's because they've been allowed to call themselves engineers for so long that they're starting to believe they are.

Industry is so hard that they often don't even hire from outside. You've either finished school and interned in or you're too difficult to retrain.

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#224
post #155
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ASML isn't guarding profound insights revealed by the gods requiring some sort of eternal liver pecking sacrifice to obtain. If the EU plays hardball to too great an extent, other countries will replicate the research. China will already have started their attempts. It isn't crazy to expect them to achieve success single handedly. If all of Asia starts mucking in the EU will get crushed. The EU does not have a track…

> The EU does not have a track record of staying ahead when they tangle with Asians for tech manufacturing supremacy. Depends on your definition of "tech", see e.g. Airbus.

Europe of today is nothing like the Europe of the 1970s.

In the mid to late 20th century, Europe has a deep & diverse industrial base. Public infrastructure projects like high speed rail were world leading. Western Europe had a military industrial base genuinely competitive with the US.

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think China is doing as well as many Chinese might believe but this doom of China is predicted every other year. Chinese companies are making strides in battery tech ( CATL ) and robotics ( DJI, Siasun )

demography is their doom

They can lose entire countries worth of people and still have a plenty of engineers to run circles around others.

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#227
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is China finished? They have manufacturing, talent, and a large internal market - and whatever financial problems they might be facing are rather virtual.

and no babies so demography is going to hit them really, really hard

How would that hit exactly look like?

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#228
post #216
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese government attempting to pick winners is the best hope the chip embargo has; Xi Jinping is ironically the person best placed to cause it to succeed. The issue is that a Manhattan projet styled effort followed up by turning technology over to private industry is something that China could very well do and would probably be effective. Let alone the silly idea of challenging multiple countries simultaneously…

I would just emphasize something obvious about different cultures. Culturally, China is really long term while the West culture is anxious (not bad, just different) and looking for short term results. China does not have problems embracing challenging and strategic endeavours knowing that the result will come out eventually.

and don't forget defeating western world is a common dream of all Chinese people. they are fighting for this prospect until it comes true. this is helpful for encouraging people.

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#229
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to bet you've never heard of most of the companies that benefited from vast amounts of US government research grants that helped lay the foundations for much of the US tech industry? Most people won't have heard about most the successful companies that resulted from the combination of military spending and research grants, much less the many failures on the way. If we knew how to pick the successes ahead of time…

I mean no one in the USA cares because the USA has accomplished amazing things with that money like say the internet.... Spending in Europe hasn't accomplished a fraction of what the same dollar has done in the USA. It's not clear why.

> Like say the Internet

It's not so clear cut ;) "Research at CERN in Switzerland by the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989–90 resulted in the World Wide Web, linking hypertext documents into an information system, accessible from any node on the network."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#230
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to bet you've never heard of most of the companies that benefited from vast amounts of US government research grants that helped lay the foundations for much of the US tech industry? Most people won't have heard about most the successful companies that resulted from the combination of military spending and research grants, much less the many failures on the way. If we knew how to pick the successes ahead of time…

I mean no one in the USA cares because the USA has accomplished amazing things with that money like say the internet.... Spending in Europe hasn't accomplished a fraction of what the same dollar has done in the USA. It's not clear why.

Spending of those dollar amounts in the US started decades earlier, and coincided with massive amount of military spending e.g. on radio and signals tech going back to WW2.

Once there now is one hub, you should expect trying to create a competitor to be vastly more expensive because you have to counter the draw of SV.

E.g. every effort to bolster the tech scene in London has sort-of worked, except a portion of the most promising companies then leave for Silicon Valley. This is repeated all over Europe.

Similarly, within the UK, I worked for a VC for whom part of the goal was to bolster investment in the regions, and we faced the constant struggle that because founders (rightly) assumed that most UK VC's preferred companies in London, a lot of the most promising companies moved to London before we got to them.

For that matter, I live in London because of this situation. I moved to London with my startup at the time because after getting funding in Oslo our VCs advised us there just wasn't enough capital for tech startups in Norway at the time, and so we moved to London for better funding opportunities.

Pouring funding in lifts all of these ecosystems, but it also hastens the departure of the ones who get the most benefit unless you do so well that you remove that incentive. Or attach strings to your funding. Fixing that will require you to provide so much capital that more startups start seeing staying in Europe as making their funding situation easier.

That means plugging the vast gap in later-stage VC funding between Silicon Valley and Europe, not just some R&D grants here and there.

That's not to say I think the European R&D funding efforts have been good enough, but it'll take many times as much funding, and a lot of extra effort, before you should even begin to hope to get the same outcome.

Post reply on HN