Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Halloway. Tracy, we're doing
Speaker 1: We're doing another semi Conductor's episode today. There's no escape.
Speaker 1: Once you're in, you can't get out, right, We're gonna
Speaker 1: be doing semi conductors episodes, um for for the rest
Speaker 1: of our career, I'm sure. But you know, I think
Speaker 1: there's actually like two reasons we maybe three, or maybe
Speaker 1: why we keep going back to this. Well. I mean,
Speaker 1: for one, there's just a lot of news, like so
Speaker 1: many things have happened, whether it's a sort of new
Speaker 1: ventures from say Intel, or new spending plans from Tawan Semi,
Speaker 1: or new legislation being proposed, So there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: new news. But I also think, um, it's just a
Speaker 1: really good it's a good topic for us. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think it's an interesting mix of technology and sort of
Speaker 1: business competition and also government policy. And we've spoken a
Speaker 1: lot about this, but government policy plays such a big
Speaker 1: role in sort of um incubating semiconductor industry, and I
Speaker 1: think we spoke about this probably the most with Taiwan
Speaker 1: and t SMC, But even in the US, you have
Speaker 1: that history of government support nurturing the early stages of
Speaker 1: the semiconductor industry as well. Yeah, that's exactly right, Like
Speaker 1: it touches on all these things technology, competition, market, stock market.
Speaker 1: But as you say, you know, there is a long
Speaker 1: history in China now currently Taiwan, Japan, the US of
Speaker 1: governments playing a role. And I think there's like this
Speaker 1: sort of broader macro thing which we talked about all
Speaker 1: the time, of sort of more activist role for government,
Speaker 1: for democratically elected or elected leaders, like thinking taking a
Speaker 1: more active role in shaping economy and managing the economy
Speaker 1: and so like. Because of that and because of the
Speaker 1: history of chips. Uh, semiconductors fit right into our fit
Speaker 1: right into our wheelhouse. Yeah, it's sort of a nice
Speaker 1: petree dish, I guess for a greater fiscal role for
Speaker 1: government's Yeah, exactly exactly right. And uh, every time we
Speaker 1: do semi conductor episodes, people listen to them and they
Speaker 1: want more, so we are going to deliver. So here
Speaker 1: we are again. Yeah, so here we are. Here we
Speaker 1: are gonna so you know, like I've forgotten all the
Speaker 1: ones we've done, We've done the fall of Intel, the
Speaker 1: rise of Taiwan, semi China's own ambitions, the stumbles of
Speaker 1: the US. I don't know if we've like really done
Speaker 1: one yet on what it would take for the US
Speaker 1: to really have a sustained recovery in its semiconductor manufacturing prowess.
Speaker 1: And of course we know that that's important because we
Speaker 1: have this acute semiconductor shortage, particularly affecting autos, but also
Speaker 1: there is this sort of long term maybe it's a
Speaker 1: defense of it's a geopolitical concern beyond this acute moment
Speaker 1: that it is problematic, that's such an important piece of
Speaker 1: basically everything that gets built is almost entirely important. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure we've touched on it in various episodes, but
Speaker 1: you're right, we haven't done a whole episode dedicated to
Speaker 1: US policy in the same way that we've done it
Speaker 1: for Taiwan or China. Yeah, exactly right. So today I'm
Speaker 1: very excited because we're going to finally talk about some
Speaker 1: of the history of semiconductor policy in the United States
Speaker 1: and also perhaps what policies could could revive the domestic industry.
Speaker 1: All right, let's do it, all right, So I'm very
Speaker 1: excited to speak to our guests. It's sort of actually
Speaker 1: the perfect combo because we actually have two guests today.
Speaker 1: One of them is an economist and one of them
Speaker 1: is a technologist. Alex Williams and huss And Kohn wrote
Speaker 1: a piece for Employee America back in March total titled
Speaker 1: a Brief History of Semiconductors, How the US cut cost
Speaker 1: and lost the leading edge and m Alex is an
Speaker 1: economist and research analyst and Employe America. Husson he's a
Speaker 1: PhD from Carnegie Mellon on semiconductor policy specifically, and he
Speaker 1: now works in tech in both operations and procurement. So
Speaker 1: between the two of them, kind of the perfect way
Speaker 1: to talk about the macro and the micro at once. Uh,
Speaker 1: Alex and Husson, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Really excited to hear. Yeah, glad to be here. So
Speaker 1: what is it from your perspective? I mean, as I said,
Speaker 1: you guys wrote this piece on Employee America, which normally
Speaker 1: is sort of very focused on bigger picture macro stuff,
Speaker 1: labor market stuff in general. Why from your perspectives is
Speaker 1: semi conductors as sort of a thing that fits into
Speaker 1: that rubric. So I think the big overriding theme behind this, uh,
Speaker 1: this series that we've been doing on semi conductors. We
Speaker 1: have two pieces out so far. We have a third
Speaker 1: one that should be ideally coming out right around when
Speaker 1: this episode goes public, and then a fourth one after that.
Speaker 1: But the I you just like us, once you start
Speaker 1: the semi conductor series, you can't stop. It's so true.
Speaker 1: We originally were going to write one piece and then
Speaker 1: it was so big, and then it kept going. It
Speaker 1: just yeah, there's something about this industry that every every
Speaker 1: time you look a little bit closer, there's an entire
Speaker 1: other world that opens up. All right, Sorry, keep going.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to interrupt you. Oh, no, worries. So
Speaker 1: really what we wanted to talk about was was semiconductors
Speaker 1: is a lens for thinking about sort of the intersection
Speaker 1: of you know, industrial policy, trade policy, stagnant demand over
Speaker 1: the period since the two thousand crash and dot coms
Speaker 1: and things like that. And the idea was that we're
Speaker 1: a labor market focused institution, but industrial policy, you know,
Speaker 1: of its nature, has a strong you know, labor market focus,
Speaker 1: and that the idea is that you're directing the economy
Speaker 1: to make best use of its resources, even if sort
Speaker 1: of short run profit considerations or efficiency considerations don't necessar
Speaker 1: sarely support that. So it seems, you know, a little strange.
Speaker 1: We write about the FED a lot, we write about
Speaker 1: labor markets a lot, But the idea is that we
Speaker 1: wanted to bite off something a little bit bigger to say, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: we do care a lot about labor markets. But part
Speaker 1: of that is up skilling, and part of that is
Speaker 1: focusing economic policy around specific industrial objectives. And when you
Speaker 1: do that, you naturally you can't help but intervene in
Speaker 1: the labor market to do so. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: and on the other hand, you know, there's been real
Speaker 1: sort of bipartisan support for sort of doing something about semiconductors.
Speaker 1: Like there's really regardless of what political party you look to,
Speaker 1: there's you know, energy behind doing something about this situation.
Speaker 1: And we wanted to kind of spell out, you know,
Speaker 1: from a perspective that sees these labor market outcomes as
Speaker 1: critical and not just accidental. We wanted to spell out
Speaker 1: what that kind of policy intervention should look like. If
Speaker 1: I can had one thing on just the industrial policy lens.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting because the semiconductor industry has has been
Speaker 1: at the forefront of a lot of these debates in
Speaker 1: the past. And if you revisit the industrial policy debates
Speaker 1: of the nineteen eighties UM when they were talking about
Speaker 1: saving steel and auto, they weren't focused on the semiconductor
Speaker 1: industry as a place that needed intervention. And so I
Speaker 1: do think given this moment in time and the focus
Speaker 1: on the industry, is a good chance for us to
Speaker 1: reflect on you know, we had a chance to do
Speaker 1: i P in the past, and we chose not to
Speaker 1: because we we thought, hey, the booming industries will save us.
Speaker 1: And we're kind of back at that same debate with
Speaker 1: an industry that that was ignored in those previous debates.
Speaker 1: So it is a good chance for us to kind
Speaker 1: of revisit the history too and say what can we
Speaker 1: learn from the past debates that we had. So Alex
Speaker 1: mentioned this idea of industrial policy being tied to labor
Speaker 1: markets and also allowing um an industry to sort of
Speaker 1: look past short term inefficiencies for the sake of like
Speaker 1: longer term competitive gains. Can you talk a bit about
Speaker 1: how that relates to semiconductors specifically, like why is that
Speaker 1: important for the semiconductor business? Model. One of the lessons
Speaker 1: that gets lost when we talk about off shoring of
Speaker 1: production is that it's not just moving a facility offshore,
Speaker 1: you actually move that expertise offshore. So a factory is
Speaker 1: not just a box with a bunch of machines in
Speaker 1: it that are outputting widgets. It is that capex, but
Speaker 1: it's also the people who come together to produce out
Speaker 1: of that factory. And so one of the major consequences
Speaker 1: of sort of the last thirty years of the like
Speaker 1: offshoring revolution in manufacturing from the United States perspective is
Speaker 1: that we also lost a lot of latent expertise within
Speaker 1: the economy. So actually, my advisor has worked with other
Speaker 1: researchers and students that showed that when plans shut down,
Speaker 1: a lot of the folks who are in the scientific
Speaker 1: research department leave the industry. They don't patent in the
Speaker 1: industry anymore. So now you have scientific expertise exiting the
Speaker 1: industry entirely. And similarly, think of like blue collar workers
Speaker 1: who you know, they might be doing servicing of machinery
Speaker 1: or they might be floor operators. They have to go
Speaker 1: find work elsewhere, and they have a lot of latent
Speaker 1: knowledge about processes and how to actually build things that
Speaker 1: gets lost when they go work in a different industry. Altogether.
Speaker 1: The upshot is that um, that human capital is not
Speaker 1: just like jobs, but they're actually the people who figure
Speaker 1: out solutions on how to make how to push technology forward, right,
Speaker 1: and not just from a academic perspective, pushing technology forward
Speaker 1: with invention, but actually with you know, tweaking on the
Speaker 1: shop floor and translating uh research and development ideas into
Speaker 1: production capabilities. And the role that policy can play in
Speaker 1: this is you know, after say the two thousand you
Speaker 1: know dot com bubble bursting, you had to situation where
Speaker 1: you know, in a lot of sort of economic models,
Speaker 1: you think, oh, there's a crash, it's going to force
Speaker 1: out the less competitive companies so that the more competitive
Speaker 1: ones can restructure themselves and win the day. But the
Speaker 1: issue is is that you had substantial labor market attrition.
Speaker 1: So this sort of you know, sort of squeezing effect
Speaker 1: like an accordion where people get pushed in and out
Speaker 1: of the labor market creates just an incredible excess waste
Speaker 1: of capacity when under a policy supported softer budget constraint regime,
Speaker 1: you could actually preserve and inculcate that you know that
Speaker 1: human capital, as it were, one of the things that
Speaker 1: you guys talk about in this piece as sorry, And
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, there's two pieces by now, but I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the one that you wrote in margin, and
Speaker 1: you draw this distinction between industrial policy, and I hadn't
Speaker 1: heard the term before, but it's very useful science policy.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, when people think, oh, let's
Speaker 1: you get to take to revive of US industry or
Speaker 1: revive tech expertise, like oh what about R and D
Speaker 1: and spending, and you sort of put that in this
Speaker 1: category of science policy. But can you talk about the
Speaker 1: sort of the distinction between these two things and the
Speaker 1: some of the approaches that have been taken in the past,
Speaker 1: Because this isn't the first time that there has been
Speaker 1: anxiety about chips elsewhere sort of pulling away from US.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna say one quick thing before leaving it
Speaker 1: to Hussan to talk about the history of this split.
Speaker 1: But I think that the core thing to remember here
Speaker 1: is there's this idea that technology is just some overlay
Speaker 1: that sits on top of existing productive processes, whether you're
Speaker 1: thinking of like you know, sort of total factor productivity
Speaker 1: or other ideas of technology that it just sort of
Speaker 1: is this faery dust sprinkled over existing production. The issue
Speaker 1: is is that for technology to really be incorporated in
Speaker 1: the capital stock, it has to feed out through and
Speaker 1: become incorporated in the actual physical products used in production.
Speaker 1: And so if you don't have an industry that is booming,
Speaker 1: that is getting turnover in CAPEX where older technology production
Speaker 1: equipment is being replaced with newer technology production equipment. The
Speaker 1: things that you know how to do with the frontier
Speaker 1: don't necessarily translate into production outcomes. But I will leave
Speaker 1: the history of of you know this this situation to Hassan.
Speaker 1: What Alex said is is very apt. I think where
Speaker 1: the policy mistake happened in the past was this framing
Speaker 1: of America needs to maintain its lead. In order to
Speaker 1: maintain our lead, we're going to fund R and D.
Speaker 1: The production and competition aspect of technology will be left
Speaker 1: up to firms in the market. And so there was
Speaker 1: a broad policy consensus to say, will fund R and D,
Speaker 1: whether that's through the military or through institutions like the
Speaker 1: NSF for national labs. The problem becomes that there is
Speaker 1: this translation that has to happen ween a researcher, who is,
Speaker 1: you know, doing cutting edge research and what is commercializable. So,
Speaker 1: just as one small anecdote, as part of my work
Speaker 1: on alternative Secilican SEAMOSS and graduate school UM, the industry
Speaker 1: was evaluating proposals by different academic researchers, and a researcher
Speaker 1: got up in front of an audience of industry researchers
Speaker 1: and was very confident that I solved your problem. I
Speaker 1: have your next transistor and went through and presented all
Speaker 1: sorts of data on its ability to operate and and
Speaker 1: showed that it was better in some cases. And the
Speaker 1: first question was what temperature does your transistor operate at?
Speaker 1: And very confidently the researcher said, oh, uh, seventy seven kelvin.
Speaker 1: It's cool that by liquid nitrogen. So just very spent
Speaker 1: two seconds thinking about it. That's not something you or
Speaker 1: I could put in our laptop or cell phone, and
Speaker 1: that's sort of you know, that's but that's kind of
Speaker 1: the where the disconnect is. We fund a lot of
Speaker 1: researchers who have leeway to go do all sorts of
Speaker 1: crazy things, and they do invent very interesting ideas, but
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. To take that, UM,
Speaker 1: the realm of science to the realm of technology requires
Speaker 1: a lot of translation and attention to you know, different
Speaker 1: types of variables like can I make a million of these?
Speaker 1: Can I put them in people's homes? Um? And something
Speaker 1: like a transistor at you know, this liquid nitrogen cooled
Speaker 1: fails that test for a technologist, but maybe not a scientist.
Speaker 1: Can we get into, like, um, the actual historical aspects
Speaker 1: of some of this, So just in terms of the
Speaker 1: industrial versus science policy split, you talk a lot about
Speaker 1: it in relation to what happened to the semiconductor industry
Speaker 1: in the nineties. Could you describe that period and exactly
Speaker 1: what happened and how it sort of set the US
Speaker 1: up for being less competitive in the tooth puss To
Speaker 1: come to where we were the decisions that were made
Speaker 1: in the nineties, it helps to take a step back.
Speaker 1: So at the founding of the semiconductor industry, you have
Speaker 1: this breakthrough at Bell Labs, and the military is extremely
Speaker 1: interested in this and it plays a very heavy handed
Speaker 1: role in shaping the diffusion of transistor technology across basically
Speaker 1: the entire economy. UM. It requires Bell Labs to openly
Speaker 1: license it um and it requires second source and contracts
Speaker 1: for any firms that are manufacturing transistors. The end result
Speaker 1: is that because of the military implications of this technology,
Speaker 1: we had this de facto industrial policy saying we need
Speaker 1: to diffuse semiconductor expertise throughout the economy. So that kind
Speaker 1: of lays the foundation for the U s having a
Speaker 1: durable lead for a couple of decades. Beginning in the
Speaker 1: late nineties seventies, Japanese firms begin to catch up, beginning
Speaker 1: with their their targeting of d RAM markets UM and
Speaker 1: they take the process lead from US firms. And this
Speaker 1: is sort of a major major watershed moment in the
Speaker 1: industry because the industry does actually ask for help, but
Speaker 1: it's first ask for help is on trade grounds, and
Speaker 1: it basically gets uh it asked for, like anti dumping
Speaker 1: measures against Japanese UM suppliers. There's all sorts of debates
Speaker 1: that happened. The big electronics manufacturers think firms like HP
Speaker 1: or IBM kind of sit out these debates because they
Speaker 1: actually like having cheap chips from Japan and there isn't
Speaker 1: a major push towards more heavy handed government involvement. The
Speaker 1: industry does get some wins in the nineteen eighties where
Speaker 1: the government allows them to do collaborative research, but even
Speaker 1: there it's pretty hands off. The government basically says, all
Speaker 1: we're going to do is fund advanced lithography and help
Speaker 1: you coordinate some of your investments across firms, but we're
Speaker 1: not going to take an active hand in shaping where
Speaker 1: the industry needs to go. We're going to look to
Speaker 1: the industry to kind of define where we need to go.
Speaker 1: And that kind of gets institutionalized in a few different institutions,
Speaker 1: the first being the SRC, which is a semi conductor
Speaker 1: Research Corporation which funds university research. Then SEMITECH, which is
Speaker 1: the most talked about industrial consortia UM which was jointly
Speaker 1: funded between U s sm E conductor firms and the
Speaker 1: do O D. And then the lastly is the National
Speaker 1: Technology road Map for Semiconductors, which is basically the industry
Speaker 1: saying here's where we think semiconductors are going to be
Speaker 1: in fifteen years and here the technical capabilities will need.
Speaker 1: And hey, government would be great if you helped to
Speaker 1: coordinate some of the early stage research research that we're
Speaker 1: going to need, you know, fifteen years from now. For
Speaker 1: future products. So how did that work out? The good
Speaker 1: side is that in the early nine nineties you actually
Speaker 1: have a resurgence for U S SMI conductor firms. They
Speaker 1: begin to recapture market share, and it is kind of
Speaker 1: like a everyone celebrates. Hey, this policy regime that we
Speaker 1: we established seems to be working. But the US takes
Speaker 1: its foot off the pedal and actually begins to wind
Speaker 1: down a lot of these institutions. One they no longer
Speaker 1: have a national focus. They begin Internet nationalized, so SEMITECH
Speaker 1: begins to introduce international members beginning the late nineties. The
Speaker 1: Technology Roadmap begins to introduce international members also in the
Speaker 1: late nineties, so it's no longer national technology roadmap, it's
Speaker 1: an international technology roadmap. UM. The end result is that
Speaker 1: a lot of entrepreneurs outside of the US kind of
Speaker 1: have a blueprint for what it's going to take to
Speaker 1: compete with US firms, and they they begin to catch
Speaker 1: up in key UH industry processes. So you see it
Speaker 1: in things like d RAM where Korean firms have have
Speaker 1: majorly caught up to even Japanese firms, and most Japanese
Speaker 1: firms have left the market. UM. And you see it
Speaker 1: now with the rise of foundries, where foundry firms were
Speaker 1: able to catch up to integrated device manufacturers and overtake
Speaker 1: you know, most recently with t SMC and Samsung overtaking
Speaker 1: Intel in terms of their process capabilities. And then the
Speaker 1: third sort of a trend that kind of makes this
Speaker 1: more exacerbated is you have a major technology revolution in
Speaker 1: the late two thousands where traditional manufacturing also sees get
Speaker 1: more expensive and US firms, which we're funding heavily in
Speaker 1: R and D and were previously integrated device manufacturers so
Speaker 1: they were vertically integrated, they begin to pull out most
Speaker 1: of their manufacturing and rely more and more on foundries, right,
Speaker 1: and so that helps those founderies also increase their overall
Speaker 1: CAPEX bend because they now have more customers kind of
Speaker 1: they have a stronger customer base to drive their R
Speaker 1: and D in capex and and help them further push
Speaker 1: the frontier of manufacturing. So ultimately, it worked out well
Speaker 1: in the near term in that a lot of these
Speaker 1: companies became more profitable because they were able to coordinate
Speaker 1: their research and development more tightly with one another, and
Speaker 1: they were able to sort of hone in on a
Speaker 1: particular vision of industry organization. But the problem is is
Speaker 1: that by distributing who is working on what in that manner,
Speaker 1: you don't build out redundancies in the system. If every
Speaker 1: individual firm is competing on every individ dual product line
Speaker 1: or if not product line approach to production, so like
Speaker 1: sort of production methodology or what have you, you just
Speaker 1: from an evolutionary perspective, have more people working on the
Speaker 1: same thing, so more sort of opportunities for kinds of
Speaker 1: you know, mutations in the method of production that may
Speaker 1: or may not be worthwhile. If you cut out that
Speaker 1: entire you know, base, once what you're working on starts
Speaker 1: to not quite work as well, you don't have a
Speaker 1: rolodex of strange ideas or mutations or slight differences that
Speaker 1: you can point to. On the one hand, and on
Speaker 1: the other hand, you self consciously shrunk the market for
Speaker 1: semicap for productive for producing machinery to produce semiconductors for
Speaker 1: domestic firms. And so these two together lead to this
Speaker 1: kind of self reinforcing situation where you're running really quickly,
Speaker 1: but the moment you trip, you're on the ground. Just
Speaker 1: one more has oracle question Before we move on to
Speaker 1: modern day efforts to boost U S semiconductor expertise and capacity.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit more about Japan in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, because this was such a big deal
Speaker 1: in terms of competition with the US, and they kind
Speaker 1: of on the one hand they went down a similar
Speaker 1: path in that the government was promoting their own domestic industry.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, they didn't have nearly as
Speaker 1: much involvement um from the military because Japan's military it
Speaker 1: kind of exists, but it's nowhere near the size um
Speaker 1: or scale of the U S. Did you describe that contrast. So,
Speaker 1: the major institution in Japan that drove industrial policy for
Speaker 1: semi conductors and also computing is MITTY, which is and
Speaker 1: I always forget the exact name, but it's the Ministry
Speaker 1: for International Trade. They actually played a very heavy handed
Speaker 1: role in reshaping both the semiconductor and computing industries during
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. They set targets for what their technology,
Speaker 1: what their internal firms needed to be capable of UM
Speaker 1: at a technology level, so they said, by four we
Speaker 1: need to have x y z process and product capabilities,
Speaker 1: and they would actually reshape firms by force forcing UM
Speaker 1: collaborations between competitors on specific technology approaches. The end result
Speaker 1: was that it allowed them to leap frog American firms
Speaker 1: in product categories like d RAM, where they took a
Speaker 1: more conservative path um to reaching sort of the targets
Speaker 1: that have been laid out by Mitti and capturing huge
Speaker 1: portions of market share. The apex of fears over Japanese
Speaker 1: domination of the industry came with the announcement of Japan's
Speaker 1: fifth Generation Supercomputing project, which I believe was in four
Speaker 1: sort of based on the heels of their success with
Speaker 1: their v l s I program UM, where they basically said,
Speaker 1: we're going to now that we've caught up to the
Speaker 1: frontier in some econo pers and computing, we're going to
Speaker 1: define the next generation of computing with advances and semic
Speaker 1: connectors and computing technology. However, that program mostly was a
Speaker 1: failure UM. It petered out and sadly going into the
Speaker 1: ES from Japan's perspective, the the economy more broadly UM
Speaker 1: stagnated UM and you know today Japanese computer and semic
Speaker 1: connector firms are nowhere near the leadership they were in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties. So they did take a very
Speaker 1: different tact to sort of play catch up to U
Speaker 1: S firms, but they were also unable to to sort
Speaker 1: of build on that catch up phase to establish long
Speaker 1: term dominance the way the U S industry was able
Speaker 1: to do in the decades prior. If I can just
Speaker 1: offer a short summary of that in a in a
Speaker 1: certain way. So much of industrial policy for ketchup is effective,
Speaker 1: especially in East Asia, because the rest of the world
Speaker 1: presents a target and the goal of policy is to
Speaker 1: hit that target. When you're at the technical logical frontier
Speaker 1: or when you're attempting to gain the technological frontier, you
Speaker 1: need to not only be good at hitting targets, but
Speaker 1: you need to become good at specifying or imagining targets
Speaker 1: that no one sees yet, which is a different necessity
Speaker 1: and sort of speaks to the fact that there is
Speaker 1: a role for industrial policy. But the fact that there
Speaker 1: is a role for industrial policy doesn't mean that there's
Speaker 1: no role for science policy, which sort of funds people
Speaker 1: thinking about where targets might be or where targets ought
Speaker 1: to be. That that's super that's super interesting. So you
Speaker 1: still have to have that R and D. You have
Speaker 1: to have the crazies that think about can we have
Speaker 1: a chip that's a negative seventies seven kelvin And Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe that's never gonna be in a phone, but there
Speaker 1: have to be people out there and investment in figuring
Speaker 1: out what that that true? Like pure science tech frontier is,
Speaker 1: you know, I know where we gotta get to, like
Speaker 1: the sort of present tense like what's to be done?
Speaker 1: But you know, one of the questions I'm still like
Speaker 1: curious about her that I feel like we need to
Speaker 1: talk abo out of. We we have. Part of the
Speaker 1: consternation right now is the sort of model that you
Speaker 1: talked about where we have design in the US and
Speaker 1: a lot of companies that are still extremely good at it,
Speaker 1: but manufacturing overseas. The separation of design and production the foundries,
Speaker 1: and that's what left has left us sort of like
Speaker 1: I guess GEO politically vulnerable. Perhaps how much is the
Speaker 1: role of Wall Street specifically in the history a contributor
Speaker 1: to companies opting for this business model. So I think
Speaker 1: that is a good question, and I think we're you again.
Speaker 1: I don't have like a deep study on it, but
Speaker 1: I do think you saw a change in the industry
Speaker 1: when you saw generational change in its leadership. So UM
Speaker 1: in the late eighties and early nineties, many of the
Speaker 1: leaders of US semi connector firms like Intel or fair
Speaker 1: Child or am D, we're still their founders. And there
Speaker 1: was actually, when you talk about this split between design
Speaker 1: and manufacturing, a model from integrated vertically integrated manufacturers that
Speaker 1: quote real men have fabs UM. It was meant as
Speaker 1: an insult towards foulist firms who, you know, we're relying
Speaker 1: on foundries to build their chips. And there was a
Speaker 1: generational change in that leadership that also sort of saw,
Speaker 1: I think the financialized approach of hey, you know, we
Speaker 1: can shed some of our assets and reduce our overall
Speaker 1: costs and increase our margins if we rely on foundries UM.
Speaker 1: SO I think it was a mix of both Wall
Speaker 1: Street's influence, but also when that first generation of leaders
Speaker 1: left the industry, new managers came in and took a
Speaker 1: different approach to UM technology development and influence in terms
Speaker 1: of mood and approach rather than profit pressures, you know
Speaker 1: necessarily or a priori So maybe just to set the
Speaker 1: scene for the present day, when you look at the
Speaker 1: U S semiconductor industries competitiveness its place in the world,
Speaker 1: What do you see as lacking and where are the
Speaker 1: biggest areas for potential improvement, and then we can talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about how we might get there. So
Speaker 1: I think if you were to look at the U S.
Speaker 1: Smiconductor industry today, there are certainly pockets of excellence. We
Speaker 1: have world leading firms and electronic design automation like Synopsis
Speaker 1: and Cadence. We have world leading firms and equipment manufacturing
Speaker 1: like Applied Materials and k l A. Ten Core, And
Speaker 1: we have world leading fabulous design firms like Qualcom and
Speaker 1: in Video, and increasingly a new crop of tech giants
Speaker 1: like Google, Apple and Facebook who have realized they can
Speaker 1: get into chip design for their specific workloads. Where the
Speaker 1: U S industry has gotten weakest is it's specifically in
Speaker 1: its semiconducting manufacturing ecosystem. Although we do have quite a
Speaker 1: few fabs still in the US, both at the leading
Speaker 1: edge and at the trailing edge, we don't have sort
Speaker 1: of a thick ecosystem of equipment suppliers and manufacturers on
Speaker 1: the ground working together to push the edge on what's possible.
Speaker 1: And that's one place where, for example, a weakness is
Speaker 1: we don't have any EUV lithography machines in the US
Speaker 1: producing commercially outside of Intel, right, we have just one
Speaker 1: company in the U S who is using that technology.
Speaker 1: And we don't have that learning environment between multiple manufacturers
Speaker 1: and suppliers who are visiting multiple sites, who are kind
Speaker 1: of learning best in class techniques from different firms to
Speaker 1: continue to push the envelope. And and that kind of
Speaker 1: hinders our ability to innovate because you don't get innovation
Speaker 1: across the entire stack. You kind of focus your innovation
Speaker 1: on the places where we do lead, So you don't
Speaker 1: you don't kind of bring that full package together where
Speaker 1: you're where you're developing new technologies in the fab and
Speaker 1: helping that helping leverage those findings with suppliers and equipment
Speaker 1: manufacturers and design firms. And this is exactly the role
Speaker 1: of industrial policy and speaks to the sort of target
Speaker 1: metaphor that you know I used earlier, which is that
Speaker 1: if you have these cutting edge firms at the absolute
Speaker 1: peak of your industry, while you are at the technological frontier,
Speaker 1: it's clear that you have people who know how to
Speaker 1: set targets. The issue becomes translating that into a you know,
Speaker 1: industrial organization, you know, sort of like an ecosystem is
Speaker 1: a very good word for it, where you know, sort
Speaker 1: of there are a variety of firms engaged in and
Speaker 1: you know who in principle can help hit that target
Speaker 1: that is being specified by those sort of absolute front
Speaker 1: of the line firms. So the idea is that an
Speaker 1: introduction of industrial policy into the existing industry like will
Speaker 1: sort of allow it to do what it does well
Speaker 1: even better by virtue of adding support and supply line.
Speaker 1: So I realized, there's one more question I want to
Speaker 1: get to, uh, and it's related to this before we
Speaker 1: get to the sort of pure question of like, all right,
Speaker 1: what is the best policy it looks like and uh
Speaker 1: huss and you sort of hinted at it when you
Speaker 1: were talking about Japan's rise and fall, and it's something
Speaker 1: Alex that your colleague Scanda m. Nath has talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about. But what is also the role of
Speaker 1: just the sort of sluggish economy and all this the
Speaker 1: lack of capital deepening, the lack of capital investment of course,
Speaker 1: from the Great Financial Crisis to you know, the virus,
Speaker 1: the pandemic economic growth was weak. Tech really never really
Speaker 1: tech spending never really recovered in the same way after
Speaker 1: the dot com bubble. What is the role that just
Speaker 1: like our our our acceptance of poor growth contributed to
Speaker 1: this sort of hollowing out of techno. How so, our
Speaker 1: first piece in the series, actually, which is called supp
Speaker 1: lying demand the chip shortage in macro context, delves into
Speaker 1: this question, you know, pretty pretty intensively, and the simplest
Speaker 1: answer is a basic, you know, sort of Canzian answer.
Speaker 1: If you don't have strong demand, manufacturers are going to
Speaker 1: see that and say, Okay, our present capacity, in whatever
Speaker 1: technological quality it's in is sufficient to meet what we
Speaker 1: think is going to happen. So there's no need for
Speaker 1: us to invest in new capacity here because at that
Speaker 1: point we'll just flood the market and we'll begin to
Speaker 1: eat into our own margins. So if you can durably
Speaker 1: predict that there's going to be low demand for a
Speaker 1: long period of time, you can cut capex and not
Speaker 1: have it, you know, negatively impact you because there's no
Speaker 1: demand for you know, anyone in in that market space.
Speaker 1: But the problem is is that if you have say
Speaker 1: technology advancing at a constant rate, and like I said before,
Speaker 1: for that technology to enter into the production process. It
Speaker 1: has to come through, it has to become embodied in
Speaker 1: new capital goods for production. If you don't have a
Speaker 1: macroeconomic environment that has enough you know, effective demand to
Speaker 1: persuade producers to invest in new capital goods and to
Speaker 1: add capacity, you're not going to see that technology be
Speaker 1: taken up because you're not going to see the capex happen.
Speaker 1: An environment of low effective demand is going to redound
Speaker 1: not only on poor employment, which you know, creates a
Speaker 1: less skilled labor force, you know, and even without even
Speaker 1: speaking to layoffs caused by you know, sort of market slowdowns,
Speaker 1: but it's just going to not have technological advances that
Speaker 1: do happen be incorporated into the economy as a whole
Speaker 1: as quickly as it could be, and so you'll see
Speaker 1: a productivity slowdown as well. So does that suggest that
Speaker 1: one of the fixes for the market right now could
Speaker 1: be setting some sort of demand floor, like just ensuring
Speaker 1: that the government is there to buy up excess capacity
Speaker 1: of semiconductors. So I think that that's a a necessary
Speaker 1: part of the fiscal spending, part of an industrial policy plan. However,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to specify beforehand where that should be done.
Speaker 1: As I'm sure Huston can speak to, semiconductors are an
Speaker 1: astoundingly differentiated market where you know, the there's there's very
Speaker 1: little that is you know, you could think of as
Speaker 1: a simple baseline. You know, in the same way that
Speaker 1: price supports for commodities like milk, you can define a
Speaker 1: basic this is milk everywhere you go, this is what
Speaker 1: milk is. So before we can do that, really what
Speaker 1: needs to be done is the US government would need
Speaker 1: to build out a data gathering apparatus to get a
Speaker 1: full picture of what supply chains look like now, because
Speaker 1: with the level of differentiation, it's difficult to say what
Speaker 1: that would look at before that data is gathered. They'll
Speaker 1: I'll let us and speak on that if he wants to.
Speaker 1: And actually this is a place where the Biden administer
Speaker 1: it should sort of started on the right foot. Um.
Speaker 1: It was one of the first executive orders that they
Speaker 1: announced was a supply chain review of semi conductors, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of as as Alex hinted at earlier, I
Speaker 1: think it's really important because there is a major bipartisan
Speaker 1: consensus on doing something. But to cut through the noise
Speaker 1: and get to the what is this something we should do.
Speaker 1: I do think the government has to take time to
Speaker 1: take stock of where are our biggest vulnerabilities in the
Speaker 1: supply chain today? UM. We've had some a lot of
Speaker 1: noise related to the shortage, especially with say automakers, But
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anyone who's saying we need to
Speaker 1: completely reshore the automobile I see supply chain. UM. I
Speaker 1: think instead, you know, the conversation we should be having
Speaker 1: at at an industrial policy level is what are the
Speaker 1: internal capabilities that we need to maintain in order to
Speaker 1: maintain a resilient UM semi conductor ecosystem in the United States,
Speaker 1: and how can we support that? So there may be
Speaker 1: areas of that ecosystem that are best supported with purchase guarantees, um,
Speaker 1: you know, for specific markets to make them competitive. UM,
Speaker 1: But I do think other areas would have other support
Speaker 1: mechanisms as well. Right So, with autos, although it's a
Speaker 1: problem right now, my understanding is that the actual technology
Speaker 1: that's missing is they're cheap, they're low end. It's not
Speaker 1: like necessarily the most urgent thing. Ultimately, it's just sort
Speaker 1: of a weird thing going on right now. So in
Speaker 1: your view, like, where should we be looking like, where
Speaker 1: do you think we're going to find the supply chain
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities and what are some of the perhaps best policies
Speaker 1: that we could be putting forth in terms of like
Speaker 1: legislation and dollars that that might go towards addressing it
Speaker 1: or maybe building a system that can resiliently address issues
Speaker 1: as they come up. I think I'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the specific deficiencies that I see, and then
Speaker 1: Alex can maybe talk more about some of the proposals
Speaker 1: that we've seen and where those are most promising. So
Speaker 1: I think we're where where the U S has a
Speaker 1: deficiency is we've weakened sort of our overall ecosystem for
Speaker 1: manufacturing innovation, and I think I would give to give
Speaker 1: a good counterexample of what that might look like. Is
Speaker 1: You've had Dan Wang on this podcast to talk previously
Speaker 1: about how magical of a place Shenzen is for its
Speaker 1: electronics ecosystem where you have engineers from across the world
Speaker 1: kind of coming together and tunkuring to build new things.
Speaker 1: And if you go back to Silicon Valley in the nineties,
Speaker 1: that's what you had. You had, you know, engineers from
Speaker 1: different firms coming together, meeting up at local bars and
Speaker 1: kind of learning from each other and learning from local
Speaker 1: suppliers on what best and class capabilities were. Because today
Speaker 1: that our domestic ecosystem has been so thinned out, you
Speaker 1: really only have you know, a few company towns where
Speaker 1: you don't get that same sharing of information. That's one weakness.
Speaker 1: I think the other weakness that we have is we
Speaker 1: we have reliance on individual rule suppliers for key key
Speaker 1: links in the supply chain. So the one that's gotten
Speaker 1: talked a lot about is t SMC at the leading edge,
Speaker 1: where you can't manufacture a trip at five or seven
Speaker 1: animeters without relying on t SMC. But we're also seeing
Speaker 1: it in trailing edge nodes where a lot of materials
Speaker 1: and components are single source, sometimes out of Taiwan or
Speaker 1: sometimes out of other countries like China, and those create
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities for our entire industrial ecosystem because hey, guess what
Speaker 1: that two dollar integrated circuit that's nothing to write home about.
Speaker 1: You can only get from one plant. And so I
Speaker 1: think you know that leads you to the first policy
Speaker 1: point that that Alex introduced, which is we need to
Speaker 1: do a review of our supply chains to understand where
Speaker 1: those gaps really are and then think about remedies. And
Speaker 1: I would say, in terms of taking seriously that the
Speaker 1: first step towards coming up with a truly efficacious industrial
Speaker 1: policy program. In terms of proposals on the table to
Speaker 1: do this, the Endless Frontiers Act doesn't really address this
Speaker 1: too much. A lot of its funding is still focused
Speaker 1: through academia, even though it does engage with the Manufacturing
Speaker 1: USA program. The Chips Act does provide for a survey
Speaker 1: of manufacturers, you know, about national security concerns, particularly across
Speaker 1: the supply chain UH, and it does the uh, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of in my opinion, good move of anchoring that
Speaker 1: in the Department of Commerce rather than the you know,
Speaker 1: the n c s C, the National uh Counterintelligence and
Speaker 1: Security Council or something like that has a similar you know,
Speaker 1: national security in the semiconductor supply chain a project that
Speaker 1: it's working on. UM. But really the the ideal is
Speaker 1: the sort of spec infrastructure plan that the Biden administration
Speaker 1: put forward, which includes fifty billion dollars for the establishment
Speaker 1: of an Office of the Department of Commerce to monitor
Speaker 1: domestic industrial capacity just across the board, which you know,
Speaker 1: insofar as the problems in semiconductors are you know, significant
Speaker 1: and melorable through industrial policy. But there's also a critical
Speaker 1: sense that this industrial policy tool kit is something that
Speaker 1: we are going to have to get better at as
Speaker 1: we sort of confront the absolute necessity of adapting the
Speaker 1: economy to climate change in ways other than just reducing
Speaker 1: fossil fuel usage in order to adapt to a significantly
Speaker 1: changing landscape, having active monitoring of domestic industrial capacity and
Speaker 1: factors impacting it from a variety of sources is going
Speaker 1: to be something that we're going to have to get
Speaker 1: much better at. And semiconductors provide, through their complexity and
Speaker 1: through their product differentiation, just an incredible sandbox for testing
Speaker 1: out methods for doing this. I have a devil's advocate question,
Speaker 1: which is, what do you say to people who are
Speaker 1: sort of um markets fundamentalists, let's call them, who would
Speaker 1: say that, well, the US has squandered its edge in
Speaker 1: semiconductor is Intel has made a ton of missteps in
Speaker 1: its own business. It doesn't deserve to have help from
Speaker 1: the government in any way because it's just not going
Speaker 1: to be efficient or it's not going to be competitive
Speaker 1: with Taiwan or China and other manufacturers. What's the response there.
Speaker 1: I agree that any industrial policy should not be viewed
Speaker 1: as a giveaway to national firms, and I think the
Speaker 1: any administration looking to implement industrial policies should be also
Speaker 1: looking to make sure that they're either getting concessions from
Speaker 1: firms that they're providing help to, or using it to
Speaker 1: seed not just existing firms, but also helping um you know,
Speaker 1: new firms take advantage of those. But the other comment
Speaker 1: I'd make is we should be kind of blunt that
Speaker 1: there is no free market operation in the global semiconductor
Speaker 1: industry when Taiwan is subsidizing the production of fads. China
Speaker 1: has openly stated its ambitions for the for its domestic
Speaker 1: semiconductory industry, and Korean Japan, of course, have a long
Speaker 1: history of supporting their domestic industries as well, and there's
Speaker 1: also talk now of Europe funding leading edge fat. So
Speaker 1: the question kind of comes given that, you know, national
Speaker 1: governments across the world are going to be subsidizing and
Speaker 1: protecting their industries, what do we need to do in
Speaker 1: order to make sure that we have a sufficiently capable
Speaker 1: and resilient ecosystem to service our economy. Because as Alex
Speaker 1: kind of hinted at semi characters are so pervasive they
Speaker 1: they touch every part of a modern twenty century economy.
Speaker 1: And to find ourselves at the mercy of far flung
Speaker 1: suppliers because that's what the market requires, I think, is
Speaker 1: a risk that a government doesn't actually want to take,
Speaker 1: regardless of its adherence to free market principles. And worse
Speaker 1: than that, it's bad economics. The idea that you know,
Speaker 1: free market principles would say that you should, you know,
Speaker 1: pursue comparative advantage and let these other countries with their
Speaker 1: cheaper labor do these lower value add processes, and you
Speaker 1: know sort of and the torpedoes to the domestic economy,
Speaker 1: you know, relies on this notion that you know, we
Speaker 1: are specializing in high value add and they're specializing in
Speaker 1: low value add and then we sell our high value
Speaker 1: add and buy their low value add and then it's
Speaker 1: better for everyone. This is sort of the you know,
Speaker 1: happy family of the Riccardian models you know, from you know,
Speaker 1: a thousand years ago. The problem is is that in
Speaker 1: an actual dynamic economy, everyone firms and nations alike are
Speaker 1: trying actively to move up the value chain. So if
Speaker 1: you sort of say, hey, sure you can have all
Speaker 1: of this, you know, sort of low value add work,
Speaker 1: like have fun. We're going to be, you know, just
Speaker 1: doing the ultra high tech. You know, we're just going
Speaker 1: to design the chips and you'll never catch us up
Speaker 1: at that. And then you know, five years, ten years, fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty years later, these firms that we're doing what used
Speaker 1: to be low value add work have stacked up enough
Speaker 1: process improvements that all of a sudden, hey, if you
Speaker 1: want to produce something at five nanometers or seven nimeters,
Speaker 1: you have to go through them. Because at the time
Speaker 1: we decided, oh, you know, this is sort of schlap
Speaker 1: work and you know, sort of Ricardian comparative advantage will
Speaker 1: take care of us forever. Markets don't work that way.
Speaker 1: Was anyone ever like warning about this back then? Where
Speaker 1: there people are like, oh, maybe it's not a good
Speaker 1: idea that all these companies for all these products are
Speaker 1: just sort of assuming, you know, just sort of thinking
Speaker 1: of Taiwan is their factory and you know, let's just
Speaker 1: do the high tech stuff here. Chalmers Johnson famously I
Speaker 1: think Hussin can speak to more. I mean, there was
Speaker 1: an enormous freak out in the nine eighties when Japan
Speaker 1: became ascendant. Uh, and that's where the d D really
Speaker 1: did get involved. But but I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone in the eighties and nineties sort of as we were,
Speaker 1: you know, crafting the path that we ended up now
Speaker 1: foresaw a future where you know, the U. S. Economy
Speaker 1: could be ground to a halt by foreign ship supplier availability. Right.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of gotten to a point where,
Speaker 1: well beyond what the architects of our current policy regime
Speaker 1: sort of imagined. Do you want do you like? How
Speaker 1: optimistic do either of you feel based on you know,
Speaker 1: we have this sort of emerging bipartisan consensus. It might
Speaker 1: be like one of the only bipartisan issues that there is. Like,
Speaker 1: it really does seem like both Republicans and Democrats are
Speaker 1: kind of on similar pages on this, and there's willingness
Speaker 1: to spend money and identification of some of the issues.
Speaker 1: So how optimistic are you that this sort of like
Speaker 1: long decay of our production no how can start to
Speaker 1: be reversed? Just speaking from a policy perspective, I think
Speaker 1: it really all comes down to the correct choice. And
Speaker 1: I'll let Husson speak a little bit more to what
Speaker 1: that correct choice of policy program is. I was gonna
Speaker 1: say two things on how optimistic I am one is.
Speaker 1: I think in the short term I'm very optimistic that
Speaker 1: we will pass policy. Whether it's the right policy depends
Speaker 1: on making sure we get policymakers to listen on what
Speaker 1: approaches we have. I think in the long term, on
Speaker 1: whether or not this episode helps the United States adopt
Speaker 1: afford looking industrial policy strategy that can be leveraged for say,
Speaker 1: climate change is still is a much bigger question, and
Speaker 1: that's the level that I would like to see US
Speaker 1: get to UM for for success. I think what Alex
Speaker 1: has done and and has seen in proposals that are
Speaker 1: out there today is that the right pieces are in
Speaker 1: proposals UM. Whether that's the Endless Frontiers Act, the Biden
Speaker 1: Infrastructure Bill, or work from some senators like Senator Coon's,
Speaker 1: the pieces are there, I think to be really successful
Speaker 1: in the short term, it's about pulling out the right
Speaker 1: specific proposals and and merging them together into the right
Speaker 1: approach with a focus on supply chain analysis, setting clear
Speaker 1: goals for what the US semiconductor ecosystem should be capable of,
Speaker 1: and then building up that supply chain, a supply chain
Speaker 1: monitoring muscle to sort of look forward and beyond the
Speaker 1: semiconductor industry to where else will want to manage our
Speaker 1: industrial capabilities to tackle, you know, future challenges with climate change,
Speaker 1: anything else, Alex and husting any sort of last things
Speaker 1: we didn't ask about. Our key ideas you want to
Speaker 1: keep something you want to get across. I guess just
Speaker 1: to look out for sort of the next two pieces
Speaker 1: in this series, which the next one will be a
Speaker 1: sort of thorough account of what the Industrial Policy tool
Speaker 1: Kit ought to be UH for for our government's looking
Speaker 1: to implement this UH and the one after that being
Speaker 1: sort of a longer theory based, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: argument against this this Ricardian comparative advantage approach to trade policy,
Speaker 1: which the semiconductor industry illustrates particularly well, but which holds
Speaker 1: across sectors. I can't wait to read them all right,
Speaker 1: Husson and Alex, thank you both so much for coming up.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having us. This is wonderful. Thanks guys,
Speaker 1: that was great. I found that to be a very
Speaker 1: helpful UH conversation to sort of like frame where we
Speaker 1: are right now. I really like I like this idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's we've we've talked about this, you know,
Speaker 1: Dan Long and a few others. You know, obviously this
Speaker 1: idea of like learning by doing the importance of actual
Speaker 1: like getting your hands already know how. But I felt like,
Speaker 1: you know, is Alex put it that, you know, technology
Speaker 1: isn't just something that's like is handed down to producers
Speaker 1: and then they like upgrade the thing like production is
Speaker 1: like what technology is. It's just like a very like
Speaker 1: sort of like useful way to think about the challenge. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I also like this idea that you know, people
Speaker 1: tend to think about industrial policy and government involvement in
Speaker 1: industry as a sort of um like a really boring,
Speaker 1: very controlling, like stifle stifling of innovation, I think, but
Speaker 1: the way um Alex and Husson kind of described it,
Speaker 1: it can be a backstop for getting really creative innovation
Speaker 1: in different products. And I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think of it that way totally, right, And
Speaker 1: I just think, you know, I really appreciate this sort
Speaker 1: of like more granular discussion about the different periods of
Speaker 1: our different policy regimes and thinking like, oh, we can
Speaker 1: do this just by funding a lot of R and D,
Speaker 1: and of course I don't think anyone is going to
Speaker 1: deny that R and D is extremely important. But then
Speaker 1: also the demand side of element. But you can't just
Speaker 1: get the demand because there's no such thing as just
Speaker 1: a chip or saying you know, I can't say we're
Speaker 1: gonna bull the chips, having to identify them. It's a
Speaker 1: difficult problem. And I think you know that that point
Speaker 1: that Husted made at the end, like what matters is
Speaker 1: getting the policy right, Like there isn't going to be
Speaker 1: a sort of nice, a nice clean up, one shot solution.
Speaker 1: It's got to be a sort of a multi pronged focus. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. I have this terrible feeling that in like
Speaker 1: two decades, we're going to be having a conversation about
Speaker 1: this moment in time, talking about whether or not the
Speaker 1: US's attempts to revive its semiconductor industry We're successful or not.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a never ending semi series. We
Speaker 1: will we will definitely talk about it in two decades,
Speaker 1: but maybe it'll maybe we'll be looking back at how
Speaker 1: it was, how the US turned it around. Absolutely, Okay,
Speaker 1: shall we leave it there, Yeah, let's leave it there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this has been another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Tracy Alloway and I'm Joey Wasn't Though. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at the Stalwart. Follow our guests on
Speaker 1: Twitter Alex Williams, He's at Tragic Bios. Follow Hussan con
Speaker 1: on Twitter. He's at Hussan Cohn and check out all
Speaker 1: of their writing. And you know there's ones coming up
Speaker 1: at the Employee America Medium page or at the Employee
Speaker 1: America website. Lots of super deep stuff there. Be sure
Speaker 1: to follow our producer Laura Carlson. She's at Laura M. Carlson.
Speaker 1: Follow the Bloomberg head of podcast Francesca Levi at Francesca Today,
Speaker 1: and check out all of our podcasts at Bloomberg onto
Speaker 1: the handle at podcasts. Thanks for listening.