“America, which is not big on state aid”?!!!
Errr, which America would that be?
To paraphrase Princess Bride: “State Aid....I do not think those words mean what you think they mean”
The US gov that spends $740bn *a year* on its defence budget. That’s $500k per soldier. That’s not per infantryman, that includes the 75% of the army that’s the logistics required to get the infantry to frontline. Unless those soldiers are considerably better paid than one might think, virtually *all* of that $740bn per year is state aid to its military contractors to maintain and develop technology.
Or would that be the United States that has Chapter 11 laws, by which the US government legally protects its tech companies while they are *insolvent* to maintain competitiveness against foreign companies. For example, at this very moment Intelsat is simultaneously a) insolvent under Chapter 11 b) being given several billion dollars to vacate C-band spectrum by the government c) has just decided to buy another company for $400m, and has done so, all the while being in administration.
Or would that be the United States that saw a competitor to its home-grow Instagram (TikTok), and immediately outlawed it purely on the basis of it being foreign-owned, and essentially passed a law that a US company Microsoft shall acquire it.
Not that the US is anything unusual among countries. Both France and Germany have pseudo-private sectors which are about 20% of their GDP, financed by arms-length gov, e,g, COFACE. That’s not even to consider the European Investment Bank that finances well over 2 *trillion* euro of state aid. In fact, it’s the U.K. that is virtually unique among developed nations in not doing state aid to a significant extent.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
