I think America doesn't manufacture semiconductors because it is a very unclean process, full of nasty chemicals. It's expensive to make semiconductors and deal with the clean-up. There are less environmental restrictions and cheaper labor in other parts of the world.
There are a bunch of Superfund sites around Mountain View, CA that serve as a reminder about the US Semiconductor industry - Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, National Semiconductor, Monolithic Memories, and Raytheon to name a few.
Nobody in the U.S. really wants that in their back yard. Of course we've seen the same kind of thing from fracking, and everything else that rightly should be regulated or banned.
What happens now with a defunded and purposefully dysfunctional EPA is anyone's guess. Maybe manufacturers will exploit the political climate to further destroy the environment to make a few more million or billion dollars.
Press (X) to doubt.
According to https://steveblank.com/2009/04/27/the-secret-history-of-sili... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo the creation of Silicon Valley had more to do with academic expertise in radio research and Department of Defense funding circa World War II. Corporations were the "second wave".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley
"Silicon Valley" describes the period between the late 1960s and mid/late 1990s (and still to this day to some extent). It has nothing to do with what went on there around World War II. Yes, semiconductor corporations created "Silicon Valley".
Before that time it may have been a sort of "Vacuum Tube Valley", but that does not have the same ring to it. And around WW2 there was tech going on everywhere, not just around Mountain View.
If I had to pick a point in time as the beginning, I'd probably put it at the founding of either Kleiner Perkins or Intel (a couple years after or before the Silicon Valley moniker was coined, respectively). Before then funding mostly came from other companies. With Intel you have successful founders funding their own new company, and with Kleiner Perkins you have successful founders funding other founders. To me it isn't Silicon Valley until this dynamic emerges.
Narrative and fact are two distinct aspects of history which work together. Portraying the heavily referenced and fact-laden linked article / talk as "just story" borders on dishonesty by intentionally ignoring the facts presented - the most interesting part. Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.
> Steve's version isn't some transcendental truth
I don't see anywhere I make such a claim. "Silicon Valley" is a narrative. My point has been that the facts paint a deeper and more complex history than that narrative provides. Have a nice day!
And of course, this is before the mega defense contractors that exist now. The military absolutely fucking hates those megacorps and does still try and actively fund new small business entrants to military contracting. The problem is mega corps buy them up as the US is owned by them.
A simple Google search for 'how many semiconductor fabs are in the U.S.' shows there are 70 commercial fabs.
American corporations are fading into irrelevance through "financial management". Manufacturing powerhouses like Boeing and Intel are a shadow of their former selve and are really just coasting on inertia.
Pretty much everywhere you see "innovation", you will see government money. Look at the pharma industry. I doubt there's a drug out there that wasn't created by researchers using federal grants.
I'm often reminded of the story of Tetris. A handful of Soviets created the game. What was capitalism's contribution? Licensing agreements, sub-licensing agreements and so on. Put another way: building enclosures. That and rent-seeking is really all American corporations do anymore.
> Nobody in the U.S. really wants that in their back yard.
Disagree. I worked in Intel's flagship semiconductor r&d division in Oregon in the 2010s.
Everybody wanted Intel in their backyard. It was a huge source of high paying and stable jobs, both for engineers with PhDs, like me, and for thousands of technicians and support staff.
There were protected wetlands on Intel's campuses, and parks and fields around them. Certainly Intel wasn't perfect from an environmental point of view, but it was not a high source of pollution.
I've worked at/with many other semiconductor fabs around the US and around the world, and they're mostly similar in this regard. Far "cleaner" than factories in many other industries.
I had a great job in R&D at Intel, in a department full of PhDs, in the 2010s, then jumped to another semi company from 2015-20.
Just before the pandemic in 2020, I got a job at AWS as a software engineer. It wasn't the only reason, but it was clear that I could make a lot more money in software.
I quickly became disillusioned with almost everything about how large software companies work, and now back working as a data scientist for an advanced manufacturing company 5 years later.