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| Science & Technology |
| Arab Silicon Valley plan raises fears |
| 2011-02-07 |
| GlobalFoundries, originally part of U.S. No. 2 CPU manufacturer AMD, plans to spend $7 billion on a new chip fabrication facility in Abu Dhabi, the first in the Middle East; business and security experts say it is not a good idea to have a large segment of the U.S. and world economy depend on chips manufactured in an unstable, turmoil-prone region; the worry is not only that a hostile government coming to power would cut off computer components necessary for economnic activity and national security, but that foreign governments could build software or hardware into chips that could transmit confidential information |
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| #3 I assume they're going to hire more Filipinos and Pakistanis to do the actual work? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-02-07 19:27 |
| #2 The chip fab and jobs are going to Abu Dhabi because their investment fund basically bought GlobalFoundries for $5 billion two years ago when AMD ran out of money. Courtesy of our unwillingness to produce energy within the US or bite the consumption bullet. |
| Posted by: One Eyed Chavith5314 2011-02-07 16:17 |
| #1 If the US federal and state governments would make it easier to do business here, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. Also, chip fabs are pretty environmentally unfriendly in addition to using a lot of poisonous chemicals that make worker safety regulations difficult to comply with in the US. Every time a US chip fab worker comes down with some disease (practically ANY disease) they want to hit the litigation lotto and sue their employer. In civil court it is more often a case of "prove the chemicals in that plant CAN'T cause the disease I have" rather than the plaintiff prove that it did. All sorts of regulations in the US are pushing those plants offshore. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2011-02-07 11:51 |