🔮 The future of chipmaking; Covid inequality; corvid empathy, classical music, a Flash derailment++ #306

Hi, I’m Azeem Azhar. I convene Exponential View to help us understand how our societies and political economy will change under the force of rapidly accelerating technologies.

The EV community has been particularly busy this week. I urge you to check out “What you are up to” below.

Dept of the near future

🌟 Semiconductors have become a fascinating area of commercial and geopolitical competition over the past four years. Chip firms’ market caps have quadrupled in five years, and deals are up. One of the more exciting tensions is whether the gains for specialisation that has led to Taiwan and Korea concentrating manufacturing capacity will be offset by the “build it closer to home” initiatives from the EU, China and, to a lesser extent, the US. Good discussion from The Economist (plus their leader.) I’ve written a lot about this in previous EVs. My take is that China will, ultimately, create a native chip industry and rely less heavily on imports (c. $300bn a year). The time frame for bu…