2 ms·

Each of their machines is custom and needs very specialised knowledge, so it's difficult to scale up. However, VC could encourage competition, which would help

• Frost1x 5y ago
  I'm a firm believer that at certain scales, competition becomes impractical to the point of irrelevance. The incentive structure has to exist to draw competitors into capital intensive markets like this and it just isn't there. As the article points out, this company has been pressured at geopolitical scales to deny China access. The fact the US government recognizes the value in denying China access because competition becomes impractical says a lot. China is filled with technical and engineering talent no different than the rest of the world and has its fair share of capital as an economic powerhouse. There's a lot of incentives for the government and people of China to develop their own competitor but it's recognized that this is impractical due to the level of proprietary knowledge, instruments, and skills needed to recreate the device. I'm confident they can produce a competitor if they choose but it'll be decades without any real competitor. Now pretend you're not the PRC but Joe Sixpack in the US and you want to enter the market. We need to drop these ridiculous ideas of competition regulating the markets. Even injecting VC money here is probably at irrelevant scale. I'm all for competition but we need to look for new models of market regulation. Competition just isn't it in many cases.