UK blocks sale of chip design software company to China The UK government has blocked the sale of a British chip design software outfit to a Chinese company, citing national security. The move is the latest step the government has taken in its increasingly defensive stance against foreign ownership of UK technology companies. Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng announced the decision …
I'm the first to complain that the government sells good public stuff off cheap, then buys it back for pounds on the penny. I also find it insane that we can't build our own nuclear power stations.
I, for one, am pleased to see a bit of protectionism, and I don't care whether the USA is to be thanked or not. We'll only maintain excellent universities if there are jobs to do on the other side, and we keep talent and know-how within the isles.
Now we've shot ourselves in the foot by pissing off the neighbours, we need to look out for ourselves as no one else is going to
You raise some good points, and on much I agree with you. I'll add some comments.
-> I also find it insane that we can't build our own nuclear power stations.
Agreed. What we are doing by getting other countries to build (and by extension, run) "our" power stations is also extremely unsound from the much-vaunted national security aspect. The French have frequently been not-the-best of neighbours, nor have the Germans. Yet who runs the energy supplies for this country now?
-> I, for one, am pleased to see a bit of protectionism
This is not about protectionism. It is about bowing to American control. British politicians see themselves not as representatives of the British electorate, but as good foot stalls for the USA. Airstrip One.
>I, for one, am pleased to see a bit of protectionism,
Except this is going to result in a US corporation offering to buy them for 1/10 the price.
If the government is going to block all other foreign buyers then their choices, or the choices of their investors, is to accept any US offer or wait for one the UK's own semiconductor giants to make an offer.
Just like Cobham, now being ruthlessly asset stripped by the US venture capitalist group that now appears to own them.
This is too little too late as the UK dose not have a huge amount of industry left to protect. Universities are screwed on research, although even before Brexit, the Research Council was doing a pretty good job of that by themselves.
"I, for one, am pleased to see a bit of protectionism, and I don't care whether the USA is to be thanked or not." So you don;t care that the UK is being dictated to and ripped off. Fairy Nuff.
"We'll only maintain excellent universities if there are jobs to do on the other side, and we keep talent and know-how within the isles." On the other side of what? The US isn't going to pay for out=r unis and research as opposed to the EU which did.
"Now we've shot ourselves in the foot by pissing off the neighbours, we need to look out for ourselves as no one else is going to" Kowtowing to the USA is not in any manner of thinking looking out for ourselves, it ois turkeys and Xmas.
We could always apologise to the EU and try and make amends but the ERG and Gammons won't allow that.
"We" voted to be inferior which means we all have to suffer.
The UK's universities are already falling out of the top groups
Of course, the people running those Universities don't see it that way because there are still a few at the top but the critical mass has already gone and the much-vaunted Russell Group is on shaky ground
An yes, this has everything to do with Brexit - These outfits were top tier because they attracted top international talent which is now gravitating elsewhere
I cannot say whether this is being done at the behest of the US, either wholly or in part. However, after the Tony Blair / Iraq saga complete with dossiers and whatnot, it is widely accepted that the UK is the USA's footrest. Perhaps stooge would suit better if you find footrest too strong a word.
It's easy: They think these things are much more valuable that you do, and they will put the money down to prove it.
Having a semiconductor industry is something those cunning Chinese devils consider valuable. The devious part of the plan is how they have kept that fact a super duper top secret so it doesn't occur to us to have one.
The highly ironic thing is that it's far better for a company to end up Chinese-owned - and invested in/expanded - than American owned and asset stripped/offshored
It's worth looking at WHY America regards China as a threat (hint, it's not military, despite the continual American sabre-rattling and rhetoric which in turn drives Chinese nationalism - it has to do with which currencies are used for international trading and how debt levels are assessed/carried)
At some point China's likely to invoke Pax Morporkia, which will be "interesting" at the very least
Correct. If it had been the EU then the same people downvoting would have been screaming insults about the EU.
The USA is no friend of the UK and never has been as history has told us time and time again and those calling you a useful idiot are considered useful idiots by the USA.
They ripped us off during WW1 & WWII. Suez anyone? Then we dutifully obeyed orders and supported the US in its subverting and invasions other countries.
China does not have private ownership in the Western sense. It's safe to assume that every Chinese "company" is state owned.
The Western equivalent of Chinese ownership would be administration.
That being said, it's rare that government is doing something right, but it was a good call to block the sale.
To be fair there should be a blanked ban on any sales like that to China.
China is a totalitarian state, aside from subjugating its own population and putting developing nations on the hook financially to gain access/control of assets, it threatens to seize Taiwan by force, where a large proportion of chip production is based.
After years of allowing China free access to decimate other manufacturing industries, and steal IP from foreign companies to enable it to move from cheap tat to more sophisticated products, the last thing the we should do is sit back and help China on-shore high-end chip design/production, gaining the ability to take Taiwan, leaving the rest of the world in the position of China's way or no chips.
It was bad enough for much of europe to become reliant on Russia for oil/gas, the lesson is clear.
Let's stop pretending it's a good idea to help totalitarian scum develop their economies and capabilities.
-> China is a totalitarian state, aside from subjugating its own population
The USA is a totalitarian state. It has about 5% of the world's population, YET more than 20% of the world's prison population. Forced labour? Look no further than the forced labour in American prisons. Endemic corruption and gerrymandering and deliberate voter disenfranchisement... where are your bigs words about subjugation now?
"The USA is a totalitarian state" Not quite total yet but moving rapidly to become a fascist state and then a medieval theocracy.
I have been visiting the right wing and religious sites for years and have watched (and warned) as they were gradually taking hold over society.
Precious few posters have been anywhere near the PRC so just parrot what they are told. It is also telling that the same people totally support the invasion of Islamic countries and murder of hundreds of thousands of Muslims but throw hissy fits when Beijing tries to prevent Islamic extremism in one of its provinces. Islam is not cracked down on elsewhere, just the one area and that area is where Islamic extremism is rampant.
The nazi history of the USA is worth researching - there were MORE card carrying USA Nazis in 1940 than German ones (complete with Nuremberg-style rallies at Madison Square Gardens) and a coup was actually planned/thwarted in 1934
Naziism was popular in the USA because Hitler modelled its ideology and iconography on Deep South/Confederate/Jim Crow laws (he waxed lyrical about this stuff in Mein Kampf), including the flag worship and THAT salute ("Bellamy salute")
The USA never weeded these people out after WW2 and they simply rebranded themselves as "anticommunists"
Couple this with a 80-year linkup between corporates+evangelists to destroy the New Deal (search for "How Corporate America created Christian America") and you have a rather toxic mix with very poisonous fruit
No, this is the government drowning in a tech pond, grabbing at any floating debris they can and assuming it's all life rings but not actually having any idea whether the life-ring will continue to float, what the life-line is connected to, who is pulling it or which bank they'll end up on.
TSMC is investing around $100 Billion (note the "B") in US foundries........
Intel is investing an undisclosed amount (likely billions of dollars) in new US based foundries......
This news item is about some piddling amount in the UK.
News......Yes.
Relevant or important.....well.....No!
TSMC is only putting money into US foundries because the US government has essentially put a gun to their head and forced them to build there as well as facilitating at federal level to kill pesky red tape
There have been a bunch of similar investments announced over the past few years which reality showed were a lot smaller and frequently ended up being distribution sites, not factories
$100B doesn't buy much in this kind of game in any case. Heathrow T6 cost $10B and that's just a big passenger handling shed. Some of the indivdual devices going inside a fab plant are above the $1B mark
@Alan_Brown
The point about the horse................
(1) The UK has sold ALL of its car factories to others (France, Germany, India, China, USA......)
(2) The UK has bailed out of aerospace, and now builds wings for AirBus. (Remember Hawker, English Electric, Gloster, Fairey, Avro, Vickers, ... and so on)
(3) There used to be a smallish computer industry ... now nothing. (Remember English Electric, ICL, INMOS ... and so on)
But of course it gets worse, because academic research supporting these industries has also disappeared.
If you think I'm just a negative, old-fashioned old f**t, how about some facts about GDP in the period 1995 to the present:
(4) UK GDP has doubled. Hoorah!
(5) China GDP has increased by 17 times.
Did I mention a horse.....long gone?
Where is the UK going to get modern industries (and related modern knowledge) for the NEXT thirty years?
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