> Most of US engineers chase easy money in web technology etc. Same concern was raised by Peter Theil about VC investing not in hard tech. Ycombinator is also classic example of investing tons of money in only short term tech. Most of silicon tech needs 5-7 years or even more.

So true! It's tempting, I'm a hardware engineer, but I know I can make more as a software engineer working in web tech. I think the issue for VCs and such is that competitive VLSI design is so much work that it's really limited to big companies who have large budgets to afford the engineering costs.

Personally, I wish there existed more high level HDLs for (at the very least) programming FPGAs and creating chip designs. I am also excited for RISC-V. I hope that as we start to run into limitations in lithography, we get more creative with our chip designs, and as a result, we see more players in the space.