This covers most everything I wanted to say - From the comments in the article:
"Very good article. I worked at Bell Labs from 1975-77 after my undergraduate degree. Today, young Scientists don't even know that Bell Labs existed or what it accomplished. I have worked in R&D since 1983 and have watched this process from that vantage point. People used to say, we are just moving the production but we will keep the R&D. That doesn't work. It may take some time, but the R&D eventually follows the shop floor."
Andy Grove spent the last decade or so of his life campaigning about exactly that problem. R&D is not separate from production. Lose the latter and you lose the former.
> R&D is not separate from production. Lose the latter and you lose the former.
It's fortunate it doesn't apply to software, isn't it? Otherwise the West would be screwed. As it is Google / Apple et al don't make much at all, it's all done in China. But there is literally zero chance of their expertise all toddling off to China. Trump's Huawei ban has a better chance of leading to China developing it's on inhouse software expertise than Apple making stuff there.
They won't lose their software expertise, but China is gaining it, especially in some areas like AI.
And b/c of that I'm not sure how much of a moat software-only expertise is as. It's hard to spin up a rich supply chain of industrial production, or re-spin it up in this case, but much easier to spin up software production and compete in that domain.
"Very good article. I worked at Bell Labs from 1975-77 after my undergraduate degree. Today, young Scientists don't even know that Bell Labs existed or what it accomplished. I have worked in R&D since 1983 and have watched this process from that vantage point. People used to say, we are just moving the production but we will keep the R&D. That doesn't work. It may take some time, but the R&D eventually follows the shop floor."