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Politics and Technology cannot be seperated

Arthur Hanson

Well-known member
Politics and technology cannot be separated. The Constitution and Bill of Rights have given the US the tools to lead the world and have for a long time. One of the earliest examples was wooden warships and I had a great conversation in London over dinner in a high-end restaurant with the retired British military attache to the United States who was a director of their naval museum in Portsmouth. Even then the US used technology in ship structure and design to design the USS Constitution with the concept any ship it couldn't outfight, it could outsail and had superior structural engineering to anything afloat. The two wives were amazed how the two of us discussed wooden warship engineering for about half an hour. The conversation started when I felt the museum would be too hard to get two when he introduced himself as a director of the naval museum. The US has always been a technical nation and our Constitution and Bill of Rights have fostered the most advanced and wealthiest nation on earth with the most freedoms of any large nation. This is why we have the Silicon Valley of today and to sustain it, we must defend the spirit of these documents that so many now want to bypass. Sometimes even if we don't like it, we must engage in politics.
 
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Arthur, I am not sure where you are going with this. We should invade China or something? Want to start WW3? Silicon Valley has little to do with actual chip manufacturing anymore. Large employers like FB, Google etc are dependent on an ecosystem that is truly global in nature. It makes no sense to talk about the "US chip industry". We are strong in some segments (OEMs, software, R&D) and weak in others (packaging, PCB manufacturing, wafer making, etc). All other countries are in the same boat.

The USA is one of many countries. Stop the boosterism and the ra-ra-ra. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights came under assault (by large if not majoritarian native forces) less than 1 year ago and that's a cause for alarm. You want to engage in politics, go on other forums and denounce the performative discourse that passes for politics in this country.

Reviving manufacturing on a meaningful scale would require a "whole country" effort that is beyond our polity. Changes in education, zoning, healthcare, Wall Street, EPA regulation etc. A significant portion of the country likes the system as it is. Is your doctor or hospital administrator or NCAA football coach ready to take a paycut to help intel build a fab? The Bill of Right has nothing to do with it.

I will believe it when the US Mint gets the green light to eliminate the penny.
 
Free thinking and the right to try and fail or succeed are critical the culture and ecosystem(education, finance and tolerance of diverse views) that made the USA the tech leader of the world by far and has since our founding. If we want to keep our lead, we must carefully nuture the ecosystem of innovation our Constitution and Bill of Rights created. If we discount or ignore them it will be at our own peril. You cannot separate the two.
 
And how does the 40% who think that Jan 6th was just a "Capitol Tour" figure into this equation? You think those folks who believe the FBI and the Democratic party are behind the riots want to hear about technology and chip making? You think that guy with the horns (now calling himself a victim) is a motivation for Apple to move iPhone assembly back to the USA?

I don't think that careful nurturing of the Constitution was on their mind and that has not changed, in fact it's gotten worst.

Most people who are really in technology and in manufacturing want to deal with the world as it is. Not how it was or how we dream it was in some mythical past.

As I said, not sure how this thread fits into our ecosystem but as far as I know, MANY other countries are free (e.g. Canada, France, UK) and they neither have 350 millions hand guns lying around nor a bunch of horned madmen running around berserking while many cheers from the sidelines.
 
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