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My grandfather was at the head of a French company that pioneered the smart card for banking use. They started with the payphone, continued with the Vitale card

My grandfather was at the head of a French company that pioneered the smart card for banking use. They started with the payphone, continued with the Vitale card (public health system card), then did the credit card. He told me stories of him going in many countries to sell the tech and concept, and this article nails it: this is a French thing, so the US did not want it. They did not want it so badly that magstripe is still commonplace. Its quite nice to listen to him about the beginnings of computing, the notion of "datacenter", etc.

Chris2048 3y ago
> this is a French thing, so the US did not want it Given how common US things are in Europe, I'm surprised there isn't more of a trading war over things like this. Personally, I think the EU should penalise foreign all social media companies, and fund local start-ups to replaces them.
- oaiey 3y ago
  The US is a huge market within, has very revenue focused companies and an active "Homeland security"/national interest management ongoing. I totally believe that the first two points reject 90% of international influence and standardization.
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    I'm not sure I understand what the first two points are. That US corporations are so focused on revenue / a large market that they are not influenced by government? Or that the US market is so big international corps cannot complete (which is irrelevant in the context of my own comment).
    - EricE 3y ago
      Simpler than that - look up the phenomenon known as Not Invented Here
  - jcrawfordor 3y ago
    Well, one of the reasons I kind of play up the French origin of this technology is because I think it turns into an interesting twist when it comes to US government adoption. Articles from the time period seem to agree that the technology was having a really hard time crossing the ocean from Europe, and while there were several factors I think a good chunk of it was just the payment networks in the US not being interested in adopting something new. But there's a bit of irony where, post 9/11, the US federal government decided they needed to really pick things up when it came to secure identity for federal employees and military personnel. So they developed and adopted the PIV standard now used for all federal credentials, which is a very soup-to-nuts smart-card based identity solution complete with PKI certificates and offline biometric authentication. The problem is that smart card technology, clearly the way to achieve this, hadn't taken off in the US, so they ended up having to buy pretty much the whole solution from France. Not that big of a deal in practice as Thales is a major defense contractor to the US anyway, but sort of a disappointment considering all the interest in keeping a strong domestic military technology capability. One wonders where the NSA was during this process, but the NSA has a tendency to both overengineer things to a degree that widespread use is infeasible, and keep things secret to a degree that widespread use is undesirable. So the more homegrown solutions to similar problems, things like the Fortezza cards, were complete nonstarters as a widespread solution to identifying federal personnel. So we have one of the factors here in the United States general lag in adoption of identity technology compared to other, especially European, countries.

Chris2048 3y ago

> this is a French thing, so the US did not want it Given how common US things are in Europe, I'm surprised there isn't more of a trading war over things like this. Personally, I think the EU should penalise foreign all social media companies, and fund local start-ups to replaces them.

oaiey 3y ago
The US is a huge market within, has very revenue focused companies and an active "Homeland security"/national interest management ongoing. I totally believe that the first two points reject 90% of international influence and standardization.
- Chris2048 3y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what the first two points are. That US corporations are so focused on revenue / a large market that they are not influenced by government? Or that the US market is so big international corps cannot complete (which is irrelevant in the context of my own comment).
  - EricE 3y ago
    Simpler than that - look up the phenomenon known as Not Invented Here
- jcrawfordor 3y ago
  Well, one of the reasons I kind of play up the French origin of this technology is because I think it turns into an interesting twist when it comes to US government adoption. Articles from the time period seem to agree that the technology was having a really hard time crossing the ocean from Europe, and while there were several factors I think a good chunk of it was just the payment networks in the US not being interested in adopting something new. But there's a bit of irony where, post 9/11, the US federal government decided they needed to really pick things up when it came to secure identity for federal employees and military personnel. So they developed and adopted the PIV standard now used for all federal credentials, which is a very soup-to-nuts smart-card based identity solution complete with PKI certificates and offline biometric authentication. The problem is that smart card technology, clearly the way to achieve this, hadn't taken off in the US, so they ended up having to buy pretty much the whole solution from France. Not that big of a deal in practice as Thales is a major defense contractor to the US anyway, but sort of a disappointment considering all the interest in keeping a strong domestic military technology capability. One wonders where the NSA was during this process, but the NSA has a tendency to both overengineer things to a degree that widespread use is infeasible, and keep things secret to a degree that widespread use is undesirable. So the more homegrown solutions to similar problems, things like the Fortezza cards, were complete nonstarters as a widespread solution to identifying federal personnel. So we have one of the factors here in the United States general lag in adoption of identity technology compared to other, especially European, countries.