Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. I'm os Voloshen here with Cara Price.
Speaker 1: Hi Cara, hi os So. I recently talked with a fellow,
Speaker 1: Britt who reminded me of something that I think you
Speaker 1: Americans often take for granted.
Speaker 2: The center of gravity for the tech industry is so
Speaker 2: much on the West coast of the United States. It's
Speaker 2: you know, you could imagine the whole thing just tipping
Speaker 2: over into the Pacific Ocean. It's so it's so heavy.
Speaker 2: And that's great for California, it's great for Seattle at
Speaker 2: Washington State. But it's worrying and it should be of
Speaker 2: a great concern to the rest of the world. What
Speaker 2: is our future? Are we just going to be takers
Speaker 2: not makers?
Speaker 3: You know, it's really interesting because as an American like
Speaker 3: I rarely imagine what it's like to be a taker
Speaker 3: rather than a maker, because so much innovation comes from
Speaker 3: our tech sector.
Speaker 1: You know, that's right. Nick McEwan has seen the story
Speaker 1: play out from both sides of the Atlantic. He built
Speaker 1: rather an impressive roster of credits, Professor of computer science
Speaker 1: and electrical Engineering at Stanford, Unicorn founder, and a meaningful
Speaker 1: claim to having built the Internet. His work formed the
Speaker 1: basis of Cisco System's GSR router, which at one time
Speaker 1: made up seventy five percent of the backbone of the Internet.
Speaker 1: But Nick recently returned to the UK and he's become
Speaker 1: particularly concerned about the fate of Britain's technology sector because
Speaker 1: he in fact sits on the Prime Minister's Council on
Speaker 1: Science and Technology, which.
Speaker 3: Is like an incredibly powerful position to have. But I'm
Speaker 3: also biased because of how much power this US administration
Speaker 3: handed over to Elon Musk and Doge briefly, very briefly.
Speaker 1: But I'm glad you brought Doze up because I couldn't
Speaker 1: resist asking Nick when we first met on the phone
Speaker 1: whether he was Britain's Doge. He laughed in that classic
Speaker 1: English way, which I think was his way of deflecting
Speaker 1: and saying I think you just did it, his way
Speaker 1: of saying get lost. But of course when I got
Speaker 1: him into the recording studio, I had to ask him
Speaker 1: what he thought about Doge and how Elon ran it.
Speaker 2: Immense respect for him as an entrepreneur and as a technologist.
Speaker 2: I think that he's brought about some of the most
Speaker 2: incredible technology, brought it to market. I think it turned
Speaker 2: out that he wasn't so good in the political sphere.
Speaker 2: I think the sort of the slash and burn approach
Speaker 2: to trying to streamline government just showed that he didn't
Speaker 2: have the experience didn't work, and I think it was
Speaker 2: a pretty much in a visible failure. I think the
Speaker 2: real sad thing about that is the wasted opportunity. I
Speaker 2: think everyone who looks at the US government the British
Speaker 2: government can say, of course it can be streamlined, of
Speaker 2: course it can be improved, and by the abysmal way
Speaker 2: that he handled it, it set us back a long
Speaker 2: way because it's going to be very hard for someone
Speaker 2: else to step in with the same role and say
Speaker 2: that they'll give it a go. I don't think anyone's
Speaker 2: going to trust that someone could do that.
Speaker 4: Well. I'm curious, like how exactly is Nick helping the
Speaker 4: UK government be more efficient and like, how does he
Speaker 4: see you know, this role being something that could actually
Speaker 4: be effective as opposed to dismal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unlike Dough, she doesn't have executive function. He's literally
Speaker 1: an advisor, right, and one of the things he's most
Speaker 1: interested in is how Britain best positions itself for the future.
Speaker 1: We spoke a lot about AI chips, and interestingly, Nick's
Speaker 1: great ambition for the UK is to take second place
Speaker 1: behind the US in chip manufacturing. He wants, he wants
Speaker 1: to bet, but lifts on the rise right now.
Speaker 4: Some people would argue it's better to be left.
Speaker 1: Nick also sits on the border of this government agency
Speaker 1: called ARIA, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency. For me,
Speaker 1: it was just cool to get an inside view on
Speaker 1: how my own country's government is positioning itself for this
Speaker 1: new technological age, especially the time when something else I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated in, which is how many nation states are starting
Speaker 1: to get deeply involved in the private sector, starting to
Speaker 1: kind of be market participants themselves, like you know, the
Speaker 1: US investment in Intel under Trump. And actually Nick, funny
Speaker 1: enough was a senior figure at Intel for many years.
Speaker 1: But without further ado, here's the rest of our conversation.
Speaker 1: So on Earth persuaded you to depart from sunny California
Speaker 1: to rainy Britain to advise the British government to move
Speaker 1: from the future to a place that often looks like
Speaker 1: the past.
Speaker 2: You know, I left the UK in nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 2: as a somewhat angry twenty six year old feeling there
Speaker 2: was no future for someone that was interested in technology
Speaker 2: and the UK. It was the time of the Thatcher government,
Speaker 2: where all of the emphasis and focus was on the
Speaker 2: city and growing the financial institutions. You could look at
Speaker 2: and say that that paid off, but they came at
Speaker 2: the cost for technology, and it just seemed that engineer
Speaker 2: was still a dirty word. Back in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: I left saying Okay, I'm done here. My tribe is
Speaker 2: in California. But in the meantime, you know, it would
Speaker 2: be easy to say, oh, the UK just languished. You know,
Speaker 2: we had our ups and downs, and there was certainly
Speaker 2: some big missed opportunities we had over the years. But
Speaker 2: I really felt as though something was changing. There was
Speaker 2: a much more of an optimism about our opportunity, both
Speaker 2: in AI and in technology more generally. I'd seen that
Speaker 2: firsthand through interactions with UK companies, UK universities, so I
Speaker 2: felt sort of felt the ingredients seemed to be coming together.
Speaker 2: And I'd started to read about ARIA, you know, a
Speaker 2: whole new bold way of funding research from government. Thought okay,
Speaker 2: you know there's there's something that's changing there. And you know,
Speaker 2: I'd been it fairly involved in a number of government
Speaker 2: funded research projects Stanford, from NSF, from Darper, and various
Speaker 2: other sources, and so it was very familiar with how
Speaker 2: that worked in the US, and you know, as a consequence,
Speaker 2: I then got more involved with ARIA and joined their board.
Speaker 1: The paradigm established by Elon and Doge was basically, technologists
Speaker 1: are better than bureaucrats at deploying technology and creating opportunities
Speaker 1: for technological growth, which should be kind of national strategic priority.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting because the mission of DOSE was
Speaker 1: really around slashing and cutting, whereas you know, the lesson
Speaker 1: you might take from Silicon Valley and the extent to
Speaker 1: which it was built on the foundation of government investment
Speaker 1: from the United States government over the last decades and
Speaker 1: the extraordinary concentration of wealth and power that investment created,
Speaker 1: both the Silicon Valley, but you know, more widely for
Speaker 1: the United States. As you think about what you're trying
Speaker 1: to do in the UK, it sounds like it's much
Speaker 1: more in that latter camp.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I'm an enormous fan of careful, thoughtful, bold
Speaker 2: investment by government in order to be able to get
Speaker 2: things started and wherever possible, for government then get out
Speaker 2: of the way, because the free market and startups and
Speaker 2: entrepreneurship are a wonderful way to create economic growth. But
Speaker 2: you can kick start them with investment in university's investment
Speaker 2: in small companies in order to be able to get
Speaker 2: this going. And Silicon Valley is a fantastic example of
Speaker 2: this all across silicon value. We've seen how that model works.
Speaker 2: So you know, I think what we can do in
Speaker 2: the UK is several fold. First of all, we have
Speaker 2: to look at strategically important areas that we can invest in.
Speaker 2: One that I've been focused on in particular over the
Speaker 2: last year is the AI chips, so chips for the
Speaker 2: AI market. Nearly everybody that's making money, serious money and
Speaker 2: serious economic growth out of the AI market are the
Speaker 2: people building the chips. In Vidia being the bright shining
Speaker 2: example as the most valuable company in the world, just
Speaker 2: top five trillion dollars in terms of its market cap.
Speaker 2: So you know, where is our role in all of this.
Speaker 2: What is the opportunity for the UK. We have a
Speaker 2: strong history in the semiconductor industry. We have a strong
Speaker 2: history in computer architecture. You know the stories we built
Speaker 2: the first commercial computer we built the first electronic memory.
Speaker 2: We have ARM designs ninety percent of the world CPUs,
Speaker 2: so we've got a strong history in this in this area.
Speaker 2: How do we rebuild that in order to be able
Speaker 2: to take a sort of a chunk of this opportunity.
Speaker 2: To put it into perspective, the market value of Nvidia
Speaker 2: is ten x that of open Ai. Yet when we
Speaker 2: think of AI, we tend to think of companies like
Speaker 2: open Ai and chat GPT obviously fantastic growth, but those
Speaker 2: who are producing the infrastructure upon which it runs, they're
Speaker 2: the ones that are bringing significant value and lasting value.
Speaker 2: It takes a huge investment in order to build a
Speaker 2: business like that, but this is where a lot of
Speaker 2: opportunity is and it's growing currently at about thirty percent
Speaker 2: per year. There are very very few markets that grow
Speaker 2: at thirty percent per year. By twenty thirty three and
Speaker 2: the current growth rate, the AI chip market worldwide will
Speaker 2: be seven hundred billion dollars. That is staggering. Imagine if
Speaker 2: the UK could reach up and grab five percent market
Speaker 2: share of that seven hundred billion dollars global revenue, there
Speaker 2: will be thirty five billion profitable, high margin dollars of
Speaker 2: revenue into the UK. I think that is the opportunity
Speaker 2: before us, and I think if we can be ambitious
Speaker 2: and go after it and invest, train our workforce get
Speaker 2: ready for it, it is an enormous opportunity for economic
Speaker 2: growth for the UK.
Speaker 1: So it's working back from a premise of where you
Speaker 1: need to be in ten years in terms of having
Speaker 1: the best chip talent outside of the US.
Speaker 2: That's right, yes, and I happen to think that we're
Speaker 2: in a very very strong position now. We need to
Speaker 2: double our workforce in order to be able to do it.
Speaker 2: We currently have about twelve thousand chip designers in the
Speaker 2: UK and it's a slightly aging workforce, so we actually
Speaker 2: need to move quite fast just to stay at the
Speaker 2: status quo. But with an industry that's growing at thirty
Speaker 2: percent per year, we probably need to double our workforce
Speaker 2: within the next ten years. So we need to be
Speaker 2: training a lot more people within the country. That's getting
Speaker 2: more people into electrical engineering and computer science degrees. Those
Speaker 2: are mostly people who are doing a level physics right
Speaker 2: now in the UK, so you know they're the seventeen
Speaker 2: eighteen year olds right now, and so you know, I've
Speaker 2: been recommending to the government that they increase their bursary
Speaker 2: scheme to incentivize and encourage more A level students to
Speaker 2: go into electrical engineering so that they can be rare
Speaker 2: to be chip designers in four or five years time.
Speaker 2: And this sends a message, right, It sends a message
Speaker 2: that this is important. We won't get there by training
Speaker 2: our own A level students alone. We need to bring
Speaker 2: in experience chip designers from overseas, So figuring out with
Speaker 2: our visas and encouraging and incentives to entrepreneurs and chip
Speaker 2: designers from overseas, encouraging outposts from chip design companies to
Speaker 2: move to the UK. So we just increase that talent base,
Speaker 2: we increase the concentration. And frankly, the US is not
Speaker 2: so appealing for many people who are in science and
Speaker 2: technology right now, and they'll say, actually, that's not somewhere
Speaker 2: I want to go. I was just talking to someone
Speaker 2: the other day, very experienced technologist who had recently moved
Speaker 2: to the UK and who decided, I don't actually want
Speaker 2: to move to the US right now. This is not
Speaker 2: an environment that feels welcoming where I want to build
Speaker 2: my career, where I want to move my family. I'd
Speaker 2: actually much rather stay here.
Speaker 1: What do you say to people who are that we're
Speaker 1: in a bubble right now? Obviously you were on the
Speaker 1: inside at Cisco, which was briefly the most valuable company
Speaker 1: in the world before the dot com crash. How durable
Speaker 1: and sustainable is this compute build out?
Speaker 2: It will for sure have peaks and troughs, just as
Speaker 2: we saw and the build out of the Internet. I
Speaker 2: think it would be reasonable to expect that we're in
Speaker 2: some kind of hype cycle at the moment. I have
Speaker 2: no idea when that will plateau or when that might
Speaker 2: have a sort of a correction, just as we saw
Speaker 2: with the Internet in the nineteen nineties. It may be
Speaker 2: a little bit like a small version of the bubble
Speaker 2: that may happen in the future. But just think what
Speaker 2: happened afterwards. The Internet didn't stop. It just took a
Speaker 2: setback for a little while, and then it came back
Speaker 2: with a vengeance. Yeah, we got rid of a lot
Speaker 2: of the fluff that was being invested in at that time,
Speaker 2: but the good companies survived. They continue to grow, and
Speaker 2: all the social media companies that came along, all the
Speaker 2: other Internet companies that came along, and then it made
Speaker 2: AI possible because of the interconnection of compute the amount
Speaker 2: of data that was available, and so I expect we'll
Speaker 2: see the same thing happen with AI. It'll go through
Speaker 2: cycles and plateaus, but long term, it's not a technology
Speaker 2: that we'll forget. It's not a technology we'll say, oh, well,
Speaker 2: we don't need this anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's an interesting position for you because you've
Speaker 1: got to observe and participate in the proliferation of the Internet,
Speaker 1: and now the proliferation of AI is starting in your view,
Speaker 1: and you get to actually advise the government on how
Speaker 1: to think about it and how to prepare for a
Speaker 1: future where the UK actually gets to capture part of
Speaker 1: the value. But you also have to think about downside risk.
Speaker 2: I think you have to be prepared to make old
Speaker 2: bets knowing that some of them won't work out, and
Speaker 2: this is hard for government to do. Whether you're a
Speaker 2: short term elected official or you're a longer term civil servant.
Speaker 2: No one feels that they get rewarded for taking a
Speaker 2: big bet that doesn't work out. So the most important
Speaker 2: thing I think is to help government get comfortable with
Speaker 2: the necessity of taking risk, and therefore the best thing
Speaker 2: to do is to rather than thinly spread what will
Speaker 2: always be a limited budget, particularly in fiscally tight times
Speaker 2: like now, is actually to make a reasonable number of
Speaker 2: bets and to go along with experts who have some
Speaker 2: skin in the game investors usually or entrepreneurs, and work
Speaker 2: with them or invest along with them in order to
Speaker 2: be able to use their expertise. And I had said before,
Speaker 2: I think the biggest growth potential that we have in
Speaker 2: this country is in aichips, the design of aichips. I
Speaker 2: don't think we should be manufacturing in them in the UK.
Speaker 2: That's a nation state activity which is well beyond our budget. Actually,
Speaker 2: the opportunity is to do what AMD and Invidio and
Speaker 2: Broadcom do, three of the most successful companies in the world.
Speaker 2: They design them. They create the intellectual property for the designs.
Speaker 1: After the break the race for second place in AI
Speaker 1: chip design, stay with us. Welcome back. I'm as Velocian
Speaker 1: and you've been listening to my conversation with Nick McEwen,
Speaker 1: who sits on the Prime Minister's Council on Science and Technology.
Speaker 1: Before the break, Nick mentioned that he believes the UK
Speaker 1: government should help Britain be a power player in AI
Speaker 1: chip design. But what surprised me is that Nick is
Speaker 1: vying for second place.
Speaker 2: What I'm looking to do is to see how can
Speaker 2: the UK be not first in the world. I think
Speaker 2: we have to concede that the US has as pretty
Speaker 2: much licked at this point, with a vast majority of
Speaker 2: the AI chips being designed there and the products are
Speaker 2: sold from the US. But who's going to be second?
Speaker 2: Which country in the world is going to be second
Speaker 2: in most areas of technology, that's China, We always say China,
Speaker 2: and in fact often they come in, they commoditize, they invest,
Speaker 2: like they did with solar panels and photovoltaics right, and
Speaker 2: then anyone else that was trying to be in that
Speaker 2: space basically was shut out and gave up. They can't
Speaker 2: do it here. And the reason they can't do it
Speaker 2: here is because AI chips use the most advanced processing nodes,
Speaker 2: which in the semiconductor industry right now is three nanometers
Speaker 2: or two nanimeter nodes. China can't use nodes below seven
Speaker 2: nanometers at the moment because of export restrictions that don't
Speaker 2: give them access to the technology that they need, so
Speaker 2: held at Bay. So beyond the US, who are the
Speaker 2: countries that are in the best position with the most
Speaker 2: experience of doing chip design, that have an understanding of AI.
Speaker 2: We are, after all the only country outside the US
Speaker 2: and China that has a foundational model company deep mind.
Speaker 2: We have a long experience of being architects and designers
Speaker 2: of chips. If we can put those together, couple with
Speaker 2: our universities, then we can be the second best in
Speaker 2: the world. So we should be able to get much
Speaker 2: more than that five percent that I talked about earlier.
Speaker 2: We should be able to get more than that, So
Speaker 2: it's a pretty conservative ambition.
Speaker 1: You mentioned ARM, which is one of the top chip
Speaker 1: design companies in the world, founded in Britain, I believe,
Speaker 1: but majority owned by the Japanese company soft Bank. Is
Speaker 1: that a win for the UK chip industry and would
Speaker 1: you be happy if creating the next ARM is part
Speaker 1: of your legacy.
Speaker 2: I'd love to see ARM continue expand it's foot in
Speaker 2: the UK. Has a significant number of R and D
Speaker 2: engineers in the UK and to a large extent, it's
Speaker 2: still very much a British company because of its large
Speaker 2: footprint in Cambridge and other parts of the country, so
Speaker 2: you know it is a true British success. Would we
Speaker 2: have preferred that it's stayed as a UK company, of course,
Speaker 2: but it's still bringing significant revenue and tax base into
Speaker 2: the country. It's still training. They have a very big
Speaker 2: training and internship program, so they are training the next
Speaker 2: generation of chip designers, whether they work for ARM or
Speaker 2: whether they go off and start their own companies. And
Speaker 2: that's how these things work.
Speaker 1: You know, when you think about what it might look
Speaker 1: like to own five percent of the market, what does
Speaker 1: that look like practically in terms of the product people
Speaker 1: will buy. Will it be I can't get access to
Speaker 1: Nvidia and therefore are by British chips? Or I have
Speaker 1: something which is less complicated and therefore I don't need
Speaker 1: the top of the line in video chips, so are
Speaker 1: by British chips? Or is that more ambitious? Is there
Speaker 1: more specialized in applications that you think will be geospace
Speaker 1: or whatever it may be that the Britain can win in.
Speaker 2: So I think it's good to make an analogy here.
Speaker 2: We talked about Cisco earlier in the early days of
Speaker 2: the Internet. They were clearly a very dominant company very
Speaker 2: early on and became for a while the most valuable
Speaker 2: company in the world. And what happened to them was
Speaker 2: what happens to many companies at that scale, and then
Speaker 2: they start to look at markets in terms of are
Speaker 2: they big enough, and so what happened is there would
Speaker 2: be new markets. Frankly, they weren't big enough, so they
Speaker 2: didn't develop them, and so you had this whole ecosystem
Speaker 2: of other companies that popped up producing them and lowerhol
Speaker 2: those markets became a lot bigger over time, and so
Speaker 2: it suddenly diversified the market and there were many opportunities
Speaker 2: for other players in the AI space. The same thing
Speaker 2: will happen. It's sort of inevitable that Nvidia will start
Speaker 2: to look at some adjacent markets or smaller parts of
Speaker 2: the market. Sooner or later, there'll be markets for which
Speaker 2: they say, these aren't really big enough for us to
Speaker 2: go after. They could be in parts of robotics, they
Speaker 2: could be parts of factory automation, they could be in
Speaker 2: autonomous drones, they could be in medical equipment. And someone
Speaker 2: will come up with an innovation that fits that need.
Speaker 2: And we have a number of promising startups, most of
Speaker 2: them in stealth mode in the UK, who are doing
Speaker 2: exactly that they're going after. Particular areas or different sort
Speaker 2: of different techniques that they think will be more efficient,
Speaker 2: that will go after specific portions of that market where
Speaker 2: we can best serve the needs that will be unmet
Speaker 2: by other parts of the market.
Speaker 1: Do you worry about the future of the UK if
Speaker 1: we don't take advantage of this on stony generation opportunity.
Speaker 2: I think it's once in a generation because if we
Speaker 2: don't step up and do it, others will and they
Speaker 2: won't be room left for us. So it's one of
Speaker 2: those things where we have to go and grab a
Speaker 2: stake of the market because you have to be there
Speaker 2: for the long term. You have to be there for
Speaker 2: multiple generations to build the trust and the understanding for
Speaker 2: the customers. Who are those customers. They're big hyperscalers, they're
Speaker 2: people that make cars, they're people that make robots, and
Speaker 2: their system integrators generally people who are building systems out
Speaker 2: of those chips. If we stay in the market for
Speaker 2: a while, we'll have more of those system companies in
Speaker 2: the UK. Today we don't really have a large system integrator,
Speaker 2: someone that takes the chips and builds them up into
Speaker 2: systems in the UK. If we're building the chips, those
Speaker 2: companies will come along. We'll build that expertise.
Speaker 1: You mean cars factory like high tech manufacturing back on
Speaker 1: British shaws.
Speaker 2: Yeah, robots, autonomous vehicles, drones. If we're building the chips
Speaker 2: and we have the ambition they will come. We'll then
Speaker 2: develop packaging technology for putting more of these chips into
Speaker 2: one package, will gain a broader expertise and that's then sustainable.
Speaker 2: It's very difficult for that to then fail once you've
Speaker 2: got that broad expertise across the market as a whole.
Speaker 2: So if we don't do that, we won't have that,
Speaker 2: we won't get that revenue, and we will eventually be
Speaker 2: crowded out and it'll be very very hard for us
Speaker 2: to make in roads.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about manufacturing versus design. You are pushing the
Speaker 1: UK to rush towards second place in terms of the
Speaker 1: second leading chip designer in the world after the US.
Speaker 1: The US is thinking about sovereignty and chips very differently,
Speaker 1: which is thinking about how can we ensure the actual
Speaker 1: manufacturing of the chips. Right, and you have a background
Speaker 1: and work at Intel, I think a still of senior
Speaker 1: advisor there. The US government took a direct stake in
Speaker 1: Intel Recently, Intel is spending tens of billions of dollars
Speaker 1: on its new chip fabrication plants here in the US.
Speaker 1: What's happening in the US in terms of thinking in
Speaker 1: political terms about sovereignty of chip manufacturing and how's it
Speaker 1: different from the considerations in Britain.
Speaker 2: You know, I think that it's very important to think
Speaker 2: of the distinction between the design of a chip and manufacturing.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you know this already, but I think it's
Speaker 2: it's good to be very crystal clear about it. Think
Speaker 2: about when you're designing a building a house. You have
Speaker 2: an architect who draws up the plans, and then you
Speaker 2: have a contractor or a builder who will building. They
Speaker 2: are two very different skills, three different skill sets that
Speaker 2: involve a very different group of people. The design is
Speaker 2: like the architect, it's where the creativity. It's the understanding
Speaker 2: of what's possible, the understanding of what you're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 2: And then there's the building, which is sort of the
Speaker 2: execution of that design of turning it into the into
Speaker 2: the building or into the chair. Today, it costs about
Speaker 2: twenty five billion dollars to build a manufacturing plant for semiconductors.
Speaker 2: You need to be all in, you need to have
Speaker 2: a huge economy, you need to have a very big
Speaker 2: determination to be a part of that industry. And the
Speaker 2: US has been part of that for a long time
Speaker 2: through multiple companies IBM, Intel and now Global found But
Speaker 2: there's a lot of expertise in the US, so it
Speaker 2: provided a good base to be doing that from including
Speaker 2: the US economy is much bigger and can off forward
Speaker 2: that kind of investment. It also has a strategic imperative,
Speaker 2: which is as a strong global presence. The US felt
Speaker 2: that it was strategically important not only for itself, but
Speaker 2: for all its allies, for the rest of NATO, and
Speaker 2: for its friendly nations, which includes US. So to some extent,
Speaker 2: we get to ride on the coattails of that American investment,
Speaker 2: that American expertise, and that American ambition as the US
Speaker 2: rebuilds and on shores that manufacturing through its investment in Intel, Anti,
Speaker 2: SMC and others in order to make sure that there's
Speaker 2: lots of manufacturing. And as you know, there are multiple
Speaker 2: manufacturing plants being built across the United States in Arizona,
Speaker 2: in Oregon, in many parts of the US and We'll
Speaker 2: see more of that happen over the next few years
Speaker 2: because of the approach that the US government is taking,
Speaker 2: and the great thing for US is that means we
Speaker 2: don't have to.
Speaker 1: The US has those same challenges you outline for Britain though,
Speaker 1: in terms of is the workforce prepared enough for this
Speaker 1: type of advanced manufacturing and is the immigration system flexible
Speaker 1: enough to allow the people who can do a great
Speaker 1: job of that to come in. I mean the images
Speaker 1: of the Hundai plant are unforgettable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, I mean I answer where your question is
Speaker 2: coming from. I don't believe this applies to the semiconductor industry.
Speaker 2: We have been producing leading edge chips in the US
Speaker 2: for generations. You have to go and visit Arizona and
Speaker 2: you see the long line of plants that Intel has
Speaker 2: their multiple generations, huge numbers of people that have been employed,
Speaker 2: very skilled operators that are expertise in manufacturing. You go
Speaker 2: down the road, you see the same thing at TSMC,
Speaker 2: so that is already there. It's already present. Yes. Sure,
Speaker 2: the US may have more stringent requirements on environmental regulations
Speaker 2: on where you place those plants. It may not have
Speaker 2: the same sort of openness to immigration that it once did.
Speaker 2: But there are plenty of people in the US. There
Speaker 2: are plenty of high paid jobs, and it's the sort
Speaker 2: of jobs that many many people are trained for in
Speaker 2: the US way more than they are here in the UK.
Speaker 2: So actually very confident that the US is in a
Speaker 2: very good position to be able to rebuild its manufacturing strength.
Speaker 2: I think it's a long long way down that path already.
Speaker 1: Just to close. I mean, it sometimes seems like there's
Speaker 1: this kind of new statism emerging where you know, in
Speaker 1: the past, people in the US or the UK would
Speaker 1: look at China and say, there are these state and
Speaker 1: enterprises and the private companies are very subject to the
Speaker 1: demands of the Communist party, and that's one approach to
Speaker 1: technological buildout. We in the West have a completely different one,
Speaker 1: which is all to do with private markets, and it
Speaker 1: seems to the market and the role of government, you know,
Speaker 1: should not really interfere in the technological innovation and build
Speaker 1: out process. It seems like of the course of a
Speaker 1: very short period of time that's completely changed. So how
Speaker 1: would you describe this new paradigm that's emerging in What
Speaker 1: are the risks and what are the benefits?
Speaker 2: Of it. So I actually want to push back on
Speaker 2: the premise. I think the posters that say that that's
Speaker 2: how the US operates and not really telling the truth.
Speaker 2: The US has been a major investor in R and
Speaker 2: D manufacturing over a very long period. Yes, of course,
Speaker 2: not the same way as China, very different approach, but
Speaker 2: in terms of investing heavily, this has been the history
Speaker 2: of the success of the United States, whether it's through
Speaker 2: funding into research from the National Science Foundation, National Institute
Speaker 2: of Health, from DAPER, etc. All the way through to
Speaker 2: government investment. So yes, sure, free market capitalism and capital
Speaker 2: investment is a very important part of the process, but
Speaker 2: generally that comes along later when you started to see
Speaker 2: the success. We should always be looking to see whether
Speaker 2: we should make an investment in order to be able
Speaker 2: to get that edge. The whole world economy today runs
Speaker 2: on chips, not just AI. Just to remember what happened
Speaker 2: during the pandemic when there was a shortage of chips.
Speaker 2: The automotive industry, worried about the economic downturn during the pandemic,
Speaker 2: said we don't need to buy the chips, okay, So
Speaker 2: the chip companies turned around and sold the ball to
Speaker 2: the data center companies that were growing. The automotive companies
Speaker 2: came back a few months later and said, oh, turns
Speaker 2: out there's an uptick in the economy and people are
Speaker 2: buying cars again. Chip companies said, sorry, we've just sold
Speaker 2: all those chips to others. You're out of luck, and
Speaker 2: there was a catastrophic effect on the world market. I
Speaker 2: joined Intel as an executive running the network and communications
Speaker 2: business in twenty twenty one in the middle of the pandemic,
Speaker 2: and I saw this firsthand as companies were duking it
Speaker 2: out for access to chips. It was a very stressful time,
Speaker 2: so we could see how important it is to the
Speaker 2: underpinnings of the world economy, which is why everybody should
Speaker 2: be worried about China's ambitions for retaking Taiwan and reintegrating Taiwan.
Speaker 2: The risk there of it disrupting the foundation of the
Speaker 2: world economy are very real, are very palpable, and so
Speaker 2: it makes sense for the US to be leading the
Speaker 2: charge and trying to rebuild that semiconductor manufacturing capability on
Speaker 2: its own territory. It's not specific to this particular administration.
Speaker 2: Is the need that will live throughout multiple administrations. I believe.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Nick every appreciding the time.
Speaker 2: Oh thank You've been really enjoyable.
Speaker 4: That's it for this week for tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Kara Price and I'm os Valanschan. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Eliza Dennis, Tyler Hill and Melissa Slaughter. It
Speaker 1: was executive produced by me, Kara Price, Julian Nutter, and
Speaker 1: Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katria Norvel for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Jack Insley mixed this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote.
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