European chip lobby seeks more government cash and policy clout Sixteen months after the European Union signed off on its €43 billion Chips Act in the hope it would stimulate semiconductor manufacturing in the bloc, semiconductor trade group the European Semiconductor Industry Association (ESIA) has asked for more public money – and more say over policy decisions impacting local chipmakers …
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But you were the one who supported giving all that money to them, and sneered at those who tried to explain to you. You and a dozen others on this forum, are on record telling everyone what excellent industrial strategy for the EU. Whereas UK people who actually worked in the industry making silicon, told you that they had seen how all this ends up, because we’ve seen the whole game play out many times before. I was there all the way back to VEB Dresden, and through Silicon Glen. Told. You. So.
The taxpayers hand over money for private companies to invest yet all the profits remain private.
I'm not against investing public money but only if part of the profit is returned to the taxpayers. And I don't just mean in terms of jobs (because that's what private companies always cite as an excuse).
@AC
"As the UK is neither in the EU nor has any native ASIC microelectronic production capability then there was never any possibility of us joining."
At the time of the US and EU spaffing money for home production of chips there were some who called for the UK to do the same. Obviously I disagreed and have yet to see a reason to change my opinion
But the U.K. doesn’t have any native fab capability *because* we have the experience of why it fails. We’ve *experienced* Silicon Glen and come through the other side. Remember,Thatcher ripped down our coal industry and invested the proceeds in Motorola and others at Silicon Glen. Anyone who tells you, that the Tories “don’t do industrial investment/picking winners” has very selective memory. We pissed a vast firehose of cash against the wall. Lost it all, and learned the bitter lesson of exactly why you don’t do that in silicon.
We in the UK learned our lessons thirty years ago, *that’s* what entitles us to say “I told you so”.
In fact, many of us have been around much longer than that. I was in at the death of VEB Dresden. There’s a very good argument that the subsidy required at Dresden was so large, tens of thousands for every East German citizen, that not only did it do for Honecker, it was partly responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Formerly a EU member … and the HP, NatSemi, Motorola plants in Silicon Glen and DEC Ayr, SGS Falkirk, NEC, Texas Instruments etc …… all got shut down and work sent to the Far East (along with plants consuming their output like IBM Greenock, Compaq Erskine, Rodime, Timex, NCR, …)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Glen
The irony is not lost in me with Chips funding.
...so we can finish building what you already gave us a load of money."
"No. And if you don't deliver what we agreed upon in order that you get that money, we'll take you to court for a 109% refund"
Of course, the contracts, like many large project contracts, are probably so badly worded, it will never happen.
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