Now I will conclude with some of my takeaways from this piece.

Even until the 80s it doesn’t seem like the U.S. occupied the status it has today. Japanese firms were doing great. Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. The ascent of U.S. into world superpower was some series of right moves. They kept their technological lead, and implemented strategic hindrance to emerging powers at the right time.

No matter how good the idea is, it needs a market to grow. Unless the profit is so foreseeably sure in the future, the venture capitals and banks can offer so much capital. Most semiconductors share one thing in common. In order to survive, efficient mass production must be achieved, and there should be a market that can provide cash right now, that could fuel growth for the future.

The success of East Asia could be owed to their integration into Silicon Valley’s supply chains. Perhaps this is the way to survive for a non-superpower nation.

Companies and nations make right moves and bad moves. In hindsight one seems obvious and the other foolish, but in the present it must not be too apparent. The U.S. approved AMD’s licensing of x86 architecture CPUs to China. In the 2000s globalization was deemed beneficial for the U.S. leading to much offshoring. Intel held on to their production capability and explored fabrication business ending up losing both pillars – the design and manufacturing. Akio Morita made a foolish choice to co-author the book The Japan That Can Say No, expediting and confirming America’s doubts about their leadership. The Soviet Union tried to simply copy the Silicon Valley, without nurturing the ethos on which the industry runs and failed miserably. U.S. government funds that was poured into reviving photolithography was in vain. Of course there were countless more bad decisions and good decisions.

Perhaps market crash and war is like a musical chair game. It’s a musical chair game where one has to do something productive while the music is playing or it would get left behind. But a greater consequence would occur if one is unable to secure a seat when the music ends. In peaceful times or when the market is expanding and waking up from its pessimism, it is beneficial to use credit and liquidity to your advantage. However, when the music ends, you need a seat. The seat, in the market would be cold-hard cash, and in war, it would be advanced arms. When trust is depleted, cash and missiles are what companies and nations would turn to.

The U.S. leveraged its influence on international choke points of the semiconductor industry when suppressing Chinese growth. It was providing security to major allies that manufacture chips in East Asia. It had ancillary parts manufactured domestically, and design softwares from local companies that allowed them to prevent the sales of high-tech chips to China. However, China’s integration in the world supply-chain outside of semiconductor domain gives them leveraging power as well. It could cut-down cheap commodities exports that the world depends on. In this age of interdependence, every global citizen is enjoying the cutting-edge gadgets, the high valuation of their stock portfolio based on the belief that it would continue growing, the cheap food enabled by cheap labor and brighter sunlight somewhere else on Earth, the conditioned air from electricity made by burning non-local oil. No one is fully independent, but I guess it’s strategically important to be producing goods that have less supply, and inelastic demand. It’s also impossibly difficult to establish a supply-chain entirely on one soil. It seems that the Chinese have failed that two times. The U.S. seem to want to be doing that, but it would be hard I suppose.

All the important figures foundational to starting a new company, or breaking-ground in a new country, was recruited from people working in leading companies in leading nations.