7 ms·

What will actually happen: some countries will spend a trivial amount of money in a PR stunt with not coordination between the countries and result in no advanc

What will actually happen: some countries will spend a trivial amount of money in a PR stunt with not coordination between the countries and result in no advance for the EU countries participating. Source: All other industries in Europe.

WhoCaresLies 6y ago
Energy, Steel, Semi(ARM), Pharma, Luxury, Distribution, Telecom Giants in Europe, there are a lot more Only Americans think the opposite, i wonder why.. And speaking of market, Europe is a big player, https://www.vgchartz.com/ https://www.vgchartz.com/ console sales speak for itself Stop being brainwashed
- eru 6y ago
  How many of those were put together by governments? (Airbus has pretty heavy government involved, to be fair.)
  - brmgb 6y ago
    Most of the big ones in France (Thales, Airbus, Safran, Technicatome, Alstom). Until the 80s, France pretty much had a planned economy.
    - nraynaud 6y ago
      it's the same in the US, it's just that the US government buys the products, while the French state buys the stock.
    - wott 6y ago
      Yes, but each of the numerous political announcements (on the French level as well as on the EU level) of "we're going to build a giant of [this industry], this time for real" which were made since the 90s have always ended up in something ranging between complete vaporwave and utter failure. Basically all French industrial successes were recorded between the end of WW2 and the end of the 70s/ beginning of the 80s, for the last 3 or 4 decades it all has been going down. That was not helped by the motto of the 90s, when the 'glory' was to become "a company without factory"... And whenever the planned giant at least comes to reality, even if it is as dwarf; the politicians who previously made great announcements, distributed millions, created random office, launched parties and cut the ribbon of the project in front of cameras, then don't even feed it with public commands, but give them to the very American or Chinese giants those projects were supposed to counterbalance. I don't think anyone here believes this kind of announcement any more: there has been so many similar ones already, that are already forgotten and replaced with yet another announcement 9 months later, and again, and again.
      - jeanjogr 6y ago
        > That was not helped by the motto of the 90s, when the 'glory' was to become "a company without factory"... Was that so silly? AMD seems to be doing alright.
        floatboth 6y ago
        Yeah.. Until 2008, AMD was into the opposite thing, and the weight of their fabs was quite damaging to them
  - yvdriess 6y ago
    In short, pretty much all of them were either established or sustained by the government. Even to a greater extent than in the US, as a several of the EU giants descent from privatized national companies.
    - eru 6y ago
      The state sponsored champions are more of a French thing. For a variety of reasons, French companies don't 'want' to grow so big otherwise. The Germans on the other hand, you can't keep them from forming giant trusts and cartels if you wanted to.
- Baetylraig7 6y ago
  I assure you that there are many, if not the vast majority of tech workers in europe who think european politics is a joke. To pretend otherwise is laughable. That you point at ARM is a good sign that you don't know what you are talking about.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  There are many EU-based multi-nationals, nobody is arguing that. OP is talking about the efficacy of EU-initiatives to create specific industries within the EU - the track record of those isn't so great and are usually PR stunts.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  You forgot the most famous, aerospace, and specifically the Airbus group.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  The EU is ahead of the US in crude steel production, but we're about 6 times behind China.[0] ARM is in the UK and not the EU. It's owned by a Japanese company and soon an American one. Does Europe do that well in pharmaceuticals? It looks to me like the US is leading in biomedical research publications. [1] Some European countries are ahead when measured per capita, but only some and that's not an important figure here. The rest I'm unsure about, but I would like to note that as a market China would easily dwarf Europe. As China becomes richer Europe will become less important in comparison. [0] Page 10 at https://www.worldsteel.org/en/dam/jcr:f7982217-cfde-4fdc-8ba0-795ed807f513/World%252520Steel%252520in%252520Figures%2525202020i.pdf https://www.worldsteel.org/en/dam/jcr:f7982217-cfde-4fdc-8ba... (PDF) [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4566288/#!po=13.3540 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4566288/#!po=13...
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    >ARM is in the UK Except that ARM has many offices outside the UK developing important IP. Their Mali Bifrost and Valhall GPU architectures are mainly developed in Scandinavia by former Falanx Microsystems of Norway, aquired by ARM in 2006, hence the norse naming.
    - unix_fan 6y ago
      Their graphics aren’t exactly class leading, and the team designing the CPU cores is in Austin..
    - filoleg 6y ago
      >Their Mali Bifrost and Valhall GPU architectures are mainly developed in Scandinavia by former Falanx Microsystems of Norway Sidenote: Norway is not a part of the EU.
  - oblio 6y ago
    > The EU is ahead of the US in crude steel production, but we're about 6 times behind China.[0] Steel isn't a relevant metric these days. Almost all developed countries can make as much as they need. China needs and produces more because they have to catch up. > Does Europe do that well in pharmaceuticals? It looks to me like the US is leading in biomedical research publications. I would hope that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoffmann-La_Roche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoffmann-La_Roche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novartis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novartis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AstraZeneca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AstraZeneca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanofi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanofi etc. aren't just twiddling their thumbs :-)
- foepys 6y ago
  I've always found it funny that Germany is internationally known for its engineering when Chemistry is equally or even more important. Bayer, Lanxess, BASF, Covestro, Evonik Industries are some of the largest in the world. Their factories in Germany are rivaling small cities in their size.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Pretty much. I mean in theory someone could build a new fab in Europe, using European-built machines (from ASML). In practice, it'll involve government involvement so it HAS to become a multi-national endeavour where every country wants to leave their mark on it, and of course said countries' work culture / ethic. Even if it is a standalone company, it'll be vying for that dank european subsidy.
- welterde 6y ago
  Might give GlobalFoundries another crack at their 7nm technology. Currently they are stuck at 14nm at their US fab and 12nm at their German fab (they rolled that out last year iirc).
  - bazooka_penguin 6y ago
    Gf had access to 7nm through the ip transfer from IBM. They chose not to build new facilities because they didn't see themselves competing at leading edge in the long term. They weren't very good at innovation. Their 14nm was licensed from samsung and their unused 7nm was transferred from IBM who was leaving the industry.
jeromenerf 6y ago
Indeed. Is there anything impactful that is somehow European (not from a single European country, but as a collaboration between) with the exception of airbus and CERN? It’s not that there aren’t skills and talents in space, cars, pharma, construction, energy, etc. Edit: clarification.
- aweb 6y ago
  ESA/Ariane for instance, which works pretty well
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    The current Ariane V is interesting. It was designed to launch a crewed vehicle that never materialized and is too big and too costly for most commercial applications.
- eru 6y ago
  Do you mean strictly a collaboration between governments, or just multinational European stuff in general?
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  What collaborations has the EU ever created for us? Apart from Airbus, CERN, ITER, ESA, a single market and a stack of successful multinational companies?
- Entalpi 6y ago
  Erm, the entire university system in Europe is built on collaboration between countries. ESA is a thing. ITER is a thing. But mainly all those small international projects that simply would be too niche or small for a single country or market. Im talking about stuff like wave power startup, on land fishfarms, salvage operations in the baltic, cofinancing of highways (or powerlines so that green energy may find its way across the union), et cetera..
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  Others already responded with STEM examples... but since you said "anything", I'll go in another direction and also point at GDPR.
jcelerier 6y ago
doesn't seem to work too bad in practice - https://a.c-dn.net/c/content/dam/publicsites/igcom/uk/images/ContentImage/Airbus%20vs%20Boeing%20orders.jpg https://a.c-dn.net/c/content/dam/publicsites/igcom/uk/images...
igravious 6y ago
Actual source: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/member-states-join-forces-european-initiative-processors-and-semiconductor-technologies https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/member-st... “ Press release7 December 2020 Member States join forces for a European initiative on processors and semiconductor technologies ” Appreciate your cynicism but maybe Brexit along with competition from China, the Far East and the United States will focus European minds. Let's not forget the many EU-wide research and development initiatives that are successful. I can provide a list if you so wish.
- LunaSea 6y ago
  Europe is actively selling its crown jewels to foreign countries. See: Acquisition of Alstom by GE in France.
aweb 6y ago
Doesn't seem like that's the case for Airbus, ESA or CERN for instance. I agree that there's a lot of bureaucracy in Europe but still stuff gets done from time to time!
- LunaSea 6y ago
  For Airbus I would agree but ESA isn't on the same level as NASA and CERN is competitive but only in a field where there is no real reason to be competitive (no money is made).
  - dieortin 6y ago
    If the only reason to do anything is money, sure. I think most people here in HN know how valuable scientific research is, and the kind of advancements that come from it. The World Wide Web came from CERN.
    - corty 6y ago
      The World Wide Web coming from CERN is not getting stuff done. It is getting lost in side-projects and doing the non-obvious, non-cheapest, non-fastest thing because it is interesting and there is a tiny chance it might be worth it in the long run. Very much not plain getting-stuff-done.
  - lorenzhs 6y ago
    NASA's budget is almost three times the size ($22.6bn vs €6.68bn, which is approximately $8bn). ESA gets quite a lot done per Euro invested. It's just really hard to convince the member nations to pay for a good PR team.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
nr2x 6y ago
Finland knows a thing or two, even if not present in the headline.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  Are you Finnish? I'm really curious what happened to all those hardware and electrical engineers developing phones for Nokia/Microsoft before they went bust, respawned as HMD, packed up and moved their production and R&D to China. Did they pivot to other industries in Finland? If so, which industries? Were they valued as much in the other industries or did they take significant pay cuts? Or did they have to pack up and move elsewhere where they would be valued? If so, where? I'm asking since I met a few ex-Nokia people looking for work in Switzerland/Germany/Austria years ago. If anyone knows more I'd like to find out please.
  - fsloth 6y ago
    Am not OP. Am Finnish. Basically they went to work to other companies and spun up lot of new ones. There are lots of small and medium sized companies in Finland that are operating in technology and hardware. I presume a majority of them had similar salaries as earlier. Engineers have never been well payed in Finland and Nokia knew the market rate very well. It rewarded few individuals very well, but the general salary range was probably nothing special. Finland has lots of engineering activity - always has had. The problem has been marketing this knowhow to external markets. Explosion of Nokia was a blessing for Finland. It was too large for a country this small, and it started domineering investments in all levels of economy. From geek consumer point of view it is a shame their engineering was run down by poor management. But the company was fixed on this course from it's early years. It basically trusted on two things - that radiotechnology would be it's secret sauce for all eternity, and the main point of competition would be it's logistics network. When the radiotechnology used in handsets became commoditized, China basically levelled the playing field regarding logistics and outsourcing, and the software development inside the company remained a second tier effort, it could have not ended any other way (in retrospect).
  - trasz 6y ago
    Lots of them work for Huawei.
odiroot 6y ago
Let's put Ursula von der Leyen on this then!

WhoCaresLies 6y ago

Energy, Steel, Semi(ARM), Pharma, Luxury, Distribution, Telecom Giants in Europe, there are a lot more Only Americans think the opposite, i wonder why.. And speaking of market, Europe is a big player, https://www.vgchartz.com/ https://www.vgchartz.com/ console sales speak for itself Stop being brainwashed

eru 6y ago
How many of those were put together by governments? (Airbus has pretty heavy government involved, to be fair.)
- brmgb 6y ago
  Most of the big ones in France (Thales, Airbus, Safran, Technicatome, Alstom). Until the 80s, France pretty much had a planned economy.
  - nraynaud 6y ago
    it's the same in the US, it's just that the US government buys the products, while the French state buys the stock.
  - wott 6y ago
    Yes, but each of the numerous political announcements (on the French level as well as on the EU level) of "we're going to build a giant of [this industry], this time for real" which were made since the 90s have always ended up in something ranging between complete vaporwave and utter failure. Basically all French industrial successes were recorded between the end of WW2 and the end of the 70s/ beginning of the 80s, for the last 3 or 4 decades it all has been going down. That was not helped by the motto of the 90s, when the 'glory' was to become "a company without factory"... And whenever the planned giant at least comes to reality, even if it is as dwarf; the politicians who previously made great announcements, distributed millions, created random office, launched parties and cut the ribbon of the project in front of cameras, then don't even feed it with public commands, but give them to the very American or Chinese giants those projects were supposed to counterbalance. I don't think anyone here believes this kind of announcement any more: there has been so many similar ones already, that are already forgotten and replaced with yet another announcement 9 months later, and again, and again.
    - jeanjogr 6y ago
      > That was not helped by the motto of the 90s, when the 'glory' was to become "a company without factory"... Was that so silly? AMD seems to be doing alright.
      - floatboth 6y ago
        Yeah.. Until 2008, AMD was into the opposite thing, and the weight of their fabs was quite damaging to them
- yvdriess 6y ago
  In short, pretty much all of them were either established or sustained by the government. Even to a greater extent than in the US, as a several of the EU giants descent from privatized national companies.
  - eru 6y ago
    The state sponsored champions are more of a French thing. For a variety of reasons, French companies don't 'want' to grow so big otherwise. The Germans on the other hand, you can't keep them from forming giant trusts and cartels if you wanted to.
Baetylraig7 6y ago
I assure you that there are many, if not the vast majority of tech workers in europe who think european politics is a joke. To pretend otherwise is laughable. That you point at ARM is a good sign that you don't know what you are talking about.
macspoofing 6y ago
There are many EU-based multi-nationals, nobody is arguing that. OP is talking about the efficacy of EU-initiatives to create specific industries within the EU - the track record of those isn't so great and are usually PR stunts.
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
You forgot the most famous, aerospace, and specifically the Airbus group.
Aerroon 6y ago
The EU is ahead of the US in crude steel production, but we're about 6 times behind China.[0] ARM is in the UK and not the EU. It's owned by a Japanese company and soon an American one. Does Europe do that well in pharmaceuticals? It looks to me like the US is leading in biomedical research publications. [1] Some European countries are ahead when measured per capita, but only some and that's not an important figure here. The rest I'm unsure about, but I would like to note that as a market China would easily dwarf Europe. As China becomes richer Europe will become less important in comparison. [0] Page 10 at https://www.worldsteel.org/en/dam/jcr:f7982217-cfde-4fdc-8ba0-795ed807f513/World%252520Steel%252520in%252520Figures%2525202020i.pdf https://www.worldsteel.org/en/dam/jcr:f7982217-cfde-4fdc-8ba... (PDF) [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4566288/#!po=13.3540 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4566288/#!po=13...
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  >ARM is in the UK Except that ARM has many offices outside the UK developing important IP. Their Mali Bifrost and Valhall GPU architectures are mainly developed in Scandinavia by former Falanx Microsystems of Norway, aquired by ARM in 2006, hence the norse naming.
  - unix_fan 6y ago
    Their graphics aren’t exactly class leading, and the team designing the CPU cores is in Austin..
  - filoleg 6y ago
    >Their Mali Bifrost and Valhall GPU architectures are mainly developed in Scandinavia by former Falanx Microsystems of Norway Sidenote: Norway is not a part of the EU.
- oblio 6y ago
  > The EU is ahead of the US in crude steel production, but we're about 6 times behind China.[0] Steel isn't a relevant metric these days. Almost all developed countries can make as much as they need. China needs and produces more because they have to catch up. > Does Europe do that well in pharmaceuticals? It looks to me like the US is leading in biomedical research publications. I would hope that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoffmann-La_Roche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoffmann-La_Roche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novartis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novartis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AstraZeneca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AstraZeneca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanofi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanofi etc. aren't just twiddling their thumbs :-)
foepys 6y ago
I've always found it funny that Germany is internationally known for its engineering when Chemistry is equally or even more important. Bayer, Lanxess, BASF, Covestro, Evonik Industries are some of the largest in the world. Their factories in Germany are rivaling small cities in their size.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

Pretty much. I mean in theory someone could build a new fab in Europe, using European-built machines (from ASML). In practice, it'll involve government involvement so it HAS to become a multi-national endeavour where every country wants to leave their mark on it, and of course said countries' work culture / ethic. Even if it is a standalone company, it'll be vying for that dank european subsidy.

welterde 6y ago
Might give GlobalFoundries another crack at their 7nm technology. Currently they are stuck at 14nm at their US fab and 12nm at their German fab (they rolled that out last year iirc).
- bazooka_penguin 6y ago
  Gf had access to 7nm through the ip transfer from IBM. They chose not to build new facilities because they didn't see themselves competing at leading edge in the long term. They weren't very good at innovation. Their 14nm was licensed from samsung and their unused 7nm was transferred from IBM who was leaving the industry.

jeromenerf 6y ago

Indeed. Is there anything impactful that is somehow European (not from a single European country, but as a collaboration between) with the exception of airbus and CERN? It’s not that there aren’t skills and talents in space, cars, pharma, construction, energy, etc. Edit: clarification.

aweb 6y ago
ESA/Ariane for instance, which works pretty well
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  The current Ariane V is interesting. It was designed to launch a crewed vehicle that never materialized and is too big and too costly for most commercial applications.
eru 6y ago
Do you mean strictly a collaboration between governments, or just multinational European stuff in general?
formerly_proven 6y ago
What collaborations has the EU ever created for us? Apart from Airbus, CERN, ITER, ESA, a single market and a stack of successful multinational companies?
Entalpi 6y ago
Erm, the entire university system in Europe is built on collaboration between countries. ESA is a thing. ITER is a thing. But mainly all those small international projects that simply would be too niche or small for a single country or market. Im talking about stuff like wave power startup, on land fishfarms, salvage operations in the baltic, cofinancing of highways (or powerlines so that green energy may find its way across the union), et cetera..
mehrdadn 6y ago
Others already responded with STEM examples... but since you said "anything", I'll go in another direction and also point at GDPR.

jcelerier 6y ago

doesn't seem to work too bad in practice - https://a.c-dn.net/c/content/dam/publicsites/igcom/uk/images/ContentImage/Airbus%20vs%20Boeing%20orders.jpg https://a.c-dn.net/c/content/dam/publicsites/igcom/uk/images...

igravious 6y ago

Actual source: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/member-states-join-forces-european-initiative-processors-and-semiconductor-technologies https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/member-st... “ Press release7 December 2020 Member States join forces for a European initiative on processors and semiconductor technologies ” Appreciate your cynicism but maybe Brexit along with competition from China, the Far East and the United States will focus European minds. Let's not forget the many EU-wide research and development initiatives that are successful. I can provide a list if you so wish.

LunaSea 6y ago
Europe is actively selling its crown jewels to foreign countries. See: Acquisition of Alstom by GE in France.

aweb 6y ago

Doesn't seem like that's the case for Airbus, ESA or CERN for instance. I agree that there's a lot of bureaucracy in Europe but still stuff gets done from time to time!

LunaSea 6y ago
For Airbus I would agree but ESA isn't on the same level as NASA and CERN is competitive but only in a field where there is no real reason to be competitive (no money is made).
- dieortin 6y ago
  If the only reason to do anything is money, sure. I think most people here in HN know how valuable scientific research is, and the kind of advancements that come from it. The World Wide Web came from CERN.
  - corty 6y ago
    The World Wide Web coming from CERN is not getting stuff done. It is getting lost in side-projects and doing the non-obvious, non-cheapest, non-fastest thing because it is interesting and there is a tiny chance it might be worth it in the long run. Very much not plain getting-stuff-done.
- lorenzhs 6y ago
  NASA's budget is almost three times the size ($22.6bn vs €6.68bn, which is approximately $8bn). ESA gets quite a lot done per Euro invested. It's just really hard to convince the member nations to pay for a good PR team.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

nr2x 6y ago

Finland knows a thing or two, even if not present in the headline.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
Are you Finnish? I'm really curious what happened to all those hardware and electrical engineers developing phones for Nokia/Microsoft before they went bust, respawned as HMD, packed up and moved their production and R&D to China. Did they pivot to other industries in Finland? If so, which industries? Were they valued as much in the other industries or did they take significant pay cuts? Or did they have to pack up and move elsewhere where they would be valued? If so, where? I'm asking since I met a few ex-Nokia people looking for work in Switzerland/Germany/Austria years ago. If anyone knows more I'd like to find out please.
- fsloth 6y ago
  Am not OP. Am Finnish. Basically they went to work to other companies and spun up lot of new ones. There are lots of small and medium sized companies in Finland that are operating in technology and hardware. I presume a majority of them had similar salaries as earlier. Engineers have never been well payed in Finland and Nokia knew the market rate very well. It rewarded few individuals very well, but the general salary range was probably nothing special. Finland has lots of engineering activity - always has had. The problem has been marketing this knowhow to external markets. Explosion of Nokia was a blessing for Finland. It was too large for a country this small, and it started domineering investments in all levels of economy. From geek consumer point of view it is a shame their engineering was run down by poor management. But the company was fixed on this course from it's early years. It basically trusted on two things - that radiotechnology would be it's secret sauce for all eternity, and the main point of competition would be it's logistics network. When the radiotechnology used in handsets became commoditized, China basically levelled the playing field regarding logistics and outsourcing, and the software development inside the company remained a second tier effort, it could have not ended any other way (in retrospect).
- trasz 6y ago
  Lots of them work for Huawei.

odiroot 6y ago

Let's put Ursula von der Leyen on this then!