Watching Apple's Mac Studio announcement yesterday took my mind to something Carl Sagan said in the Cosmos series.
The Mac Studio's underlying technology goes far beyond the many tens of thousands of person-hours Apple has invested. The semiconductor industry that stands on the shoulders of Bell Laboratories back to the fundamental work of James Clerk Maxwell and before. Apple and others are able to come up with advances that strike us as dramatic as they make an impact on our lives. The impact of some innovations like the electric light, the telephone, the automobile, powered flight, radio, the atomic bomb and the Internet have changed how we see ourselves. But take a look and they're all built on long chains of invention and innovation that are often forgotten.
This comes to mind with the horrors going on in Ukraine. Russia has always had brilliant minds. They've made stunning advances in physics and math, but they haven't been as successful as the West in building on that. A good deal of their technology is derivative. In the past 25 years this may be by design. Most of the export value comes from extraction - oil and other natural resources. These industries seem to fall under the direct control of Putin's friends. More technical industries are still under oligarchs, but these aren't super high profit. As long as the core players can control them, the real focus of the economy is what can be run by shear force and power rather than technology and sound business practices. (note - this is speculation as I'm certainly not a Russian expert.. so take it with a grain of salt).
High tech industry is required for the military and some consumer use. Although that is supposed to be home-brew there is a lot of importing and rebranding. I've seen that in electronics used in physics experiments and am told is standard operating procedure.
So imagine you can't important and rebrand the CNC tools necessary to make jet engines. Can you make the tools yourself. What if you can't even make precision bearings? What if China doesn't allow electronics into the country (they probably will, but now they can be the Mafia dons)? Sanctions can make a medium and longterm impact.
You don't need to make your Apple pies from scratch - we have our universe - but few companies or countries have the capability to build objects of the modern world without technologies that exist outside. All of these long threads few of us think about until they aren't available. Think about all of those high value products waiting for fifty cent ICs that were designed twenty years ago...
__________
PS - I'd love a Mac Studio, but it's way beyond my budget.
Comments