American corporations are what created "Silicon Valley" in the first place. America is not slow, and it's definitely not "too big to fail" as the current administration is trying to make it fail, but that is an aside.
I think America doesn't manufacture semiconductors because it is a very unclean process, full of nasty chemicals. It's expensive to make semiconductors and deal with the clean-up. There are less environmental restrictions and cheaper labor in other parts of the world.
There are a bunch of Superfund sites around Mountain View, CA that serve as a reminder about the US Semiconductor industry - Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, National Semiconductor, Monolithic Memories, and Raytheon to name a few.
Nobody in the U.S. really wants that in their back yard. Of course we've seen the same kind of thing from fracking, and everything else that rightly should be regulated or banned.
What happens now with a defunded and purposefully dysfunctional EPA is anyone's guess. Maybe manufacturers will exploit the political climate to further destroy the environment to make a few more million or billion dollars.
> I think America doesn't manufacture semiconductors because it is a very unclean process, full of nasty chemicals. It's expensive to make semiconductors and deal with the clean-up. There are less environmental restrictions and cheaper labor in other parts of the world.
> Nobody in the U.S. really wants that in their back yard.
Disagree. I worked in Intel's flagship semiconductor r&d division in Oregon in the 2010s.
Everybody wanted Intel in their backyard. It was a huge source of high paying and stable jobs, both for engineers with PhDs, like me, and for thousands of technicians and support staff.
There were protected wetlands on Intel's campuses, and parks and fields around them. Certainly Intel wasn't perfect from an environmental point of view, but it was not a high source of pollution.
I've worked at/with many other semiconductor fabs around the US and around the world, and they're mostly similar in this regard. Far "cleaner" than factories in many other industries.
This. There are a few areas in the US that have a long history of being incubators of engineering firms beyond Silicon Valley, all because of WW2 which had tons of money being spent to produce certain types of equipment in each area.
And of course, this is before the mega defense contractors that exist now. The military absolutely fucking hates those megacorps and does still try and actively fund new small business entrants to military contracting. The problem is mega corps buy them up as the US is owned by them.
“Silicon Valley” is more than just some of the post-war defense research and high tech weapons contracts. It includes the financing/fundraising, the talent pool, nearby university research, and the advantages of “fail fast” startup culture (including California’s jurisprudence). It didn’t become recognizable in its current form until after NASA’s Moon Shot project threw tons of funding at research and manufacturing of computer miniaturization.
>"The popularization of the name is often credited to Don Hoefler, the first journalist to use the term in a news story.[1] His article "Silicon Valley U.S.A." was published in the January 11, 1971"
"Silicon Valley" describes the period between the late 1960s and mid/late 1990s (and still to this day to some extent). It has nothing to do with what went on there around World War II. Yes, semiconductor corporations created "Silicon Valley".
Before that time it may have been a sort of "Vacuum Tube Valley", but that does not have the same ring to it. And around WW2 there was tech going on everywhere, not just around Mountain View.
I skimmed it pretty quickly, but it doesn't change the fact that nobody called it "Silicon Valley" until 1971. The article you sent me was about WW2, and military, so far as I could tell. Reading it wouldn't change anything about my statements.
It literally tracks the histories of the individuals who founded all the corporations people think of as belonging to "Silicon Valley". Things tend to exist for a while before they get a widely recognizable name, friend.
Silicon Valley as people think of it today (tech, talent, and capital) is generally considered to have come together in the early 1970s. That doesn't mean the ingredients weren't there before -- tech had been around for decades already, and the laws allowing free movement of talent go back to the late 1800s -- but by most accounts the early 1970s are when it all clicked. Note that there's no fact of the matter to be right or wrong about here, though.
If I had to pick a point in time as the beginning, I'd probably put it at the founding of either Kleiner Perkins or Intel (a couple years after or before the Silicon Valley moniker was coined, respectively). Before then funding mostly came from other companies. With Intel you have successful founders funding their own new company, and with Kleiner Perkins you have successful founders funding other founders. To me it isn't Silicon Valley until this dynamic emerges.
Thanks for letting me know you didn't read the article, and adding nothing to what is already said within it. If you go back and read it now, you may learn some things about how history differs from what is "generally considered" as you put it. Have fun!
I've seen Steve's talk. Like all historical accounts it's just a story. It pulls some details into the foreground and pushes the rest back. Other stories arrange the details differently, for example marking Silicon Valley's beginning quite a bit earlier, with the founding of HP, a decade before the Department of Defense existed. Steve's version isn't some transcendental truth, and people aren't wrong to disagree with it or with you.
Narrative and fact are two distinct aspects of history which work together. Portraying the heavily referenced and fact-laden linked article / talk as "just story" borders on dishonesty by intentionally ignoring the facts presented - the most interesting part. Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.
> Steve's version isn't some transcendental truth
I don't see anywhere I make such a claim. "Silicon Valley" is a narrative. My point has been that the facts paint a deeper and more complex history than that narrative provides. Have a nice day!
TSMC's competitive advantage comes from Taiwan's unique willingness to look away from wanton dumping of used acid wash like it's the 80s in Silicon Valley? Or moderately more expensive labor on one of those highly automated factories with FOUPs zooming every which way?
Quite a bit of "Silicon Valley" was founded on outright theft from competitors. Now that the American industry is entrenched and "protect intellectual property" dominates over "improvement", falling behind other nations is inevitable.
One of the risks of any belief in American exceptionalism is that it hides the reality that there’s nothing special about America to have deserved its position in industry and commerce. There’s no special reason why it might not soon be someone else’s turn.
The military industrial complex, endowment funds from large colleges and academic research created Silicon Valley.
American corporations are fading into irrelevance through "financial management". Manufacturing powerhouses like Boeing and Intel are a shadow of their former selve and are really just coasting on inertia.
Pretty much everywhere you see "innovation", you will see government money. Look at the pharma industry. I doubt there's a drug out there that wasn't created by researchers using federal grants.
I'm often reminded of the story of Tetris. A handful of Soviets created the game. What was capitalism's contribution? Licensing agreements, sub-licensing agreements and so on. Put another way: building enclosures. That and rent-seeking is really all American corporations do anymore.
I think America doesn't manufacture semiconductors because it is a very unclean process, full of nasty chemicals. It's expensive to make semiconductors and deal with the clean-up. There are less environmental restrictions and cheaper labor in other parts of the world.
There are a bunch of Superfund sites around Mountain View, CA that serve as a reminder about the US Semiconductor industry - Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, National Semiconductor, Monolithic Memories, and Raytheon to name a few.
Nobody in the U.S. really wants that in their back yard. Of course we've seen the same kind of thing from fracking, and everything else that rightly should be regulated or banned.
What happens now with a defunded and purposefully dysfunctional EPA is anyone's guess. Maybe manufacturers will exploit the political climate to further destroy the environment to make a few more million or billion dollars.