I recently left my job of 12 years at Freescale Semiconductor (née Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector) and started with a new company, essentially out of the semiconductor industry and into the realm of making money by licensing intellectual property. It has been a big change that was motivated in no small part by the precipitous decline of the semiconductor industry in the United States.
Recently, John Cole at Balloon Juice has asked in regards to the Big Three automakers in the United State, “why bail them out?” There are some who argue that car manufacturing is a “strategic industry” that cannot be allowed to leave the United States.
My question is this: how is making cars more strategic than making the integrated circuits that go into the smart bombs and missiles and computers and other high tech instruments that we now depend upon to minimize casualties on our side when we go to war?
Guess what… the industry that makes those integrated circuits has already left the country. Only one major company still has plans and the ability to build state of the art integrated circuit factories in the United States. Yet, I don’t hear anyone claiming we need to bail out the troubled semiconductor companies.
The vast majority of computer chips are now made in Taiwan or Singapore, within shouting distance of China.
Is this really how we want a truly strategic industry to be run, with the factories offshore and located near our biggest potential rival?
What is our strategic direction and are we making the right choices to support it?
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Cross-posted to Random Fate.