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Comment by bvaldivielso | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. What about hiring people from the leading companies? Isn't that how a lot of knowledge transfer happens in all industries? Are non-competes enforceable internationally?

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Knowing that you fire microdroplets of tin with a specific shape into a chamber at 50khz and hit it with two laser pulses is one thing, doing it is an entirely different one.

How EUV works: https://youtu.be/5Ge2RcvDlgw

> Interesting. What about hiring people from the leading companies? Isn't that how a lot of knowledge transfer happens in all industries?

Maybe it's not that easy. I have no knowledge of semiconductor manufacturing (let alone advanced semiconductor manufacturing), but it strikes me as one of those areas that might have thousands of very specialized crazy hard problems that all need to be solved just right to get things working. If you hire away some guy from a leading company, at best he might have a thousandth of that company's solution (and maybe that thousandth of a solution is only valuable in a path-dependent context with all the other solutions that leading company followed).

> Are non-competes enforceable internationally?

Doubt it. Though I suppose in some cases disclosing trade secrets for advanced technology my violate other laws.

> (and maybe that thousandth of a solution is only valuable in a path-dependent context with all the other solutions that leading company followed).

Yeah, that's a real obstacle, not much of a "maybe" about it.

I have a feeling that this, more than any other factor, is what is driving large-scale international tech IP theft. You have to grab stuff wholesale in hopes of either (a) teasing out isolated nuggets that happen to be applicable to your own efforts, or (b) recreating the surrounding path-dependent context (which doesn't have a well-defined boundary) in order to have a working solution.

On some other forums/blogs that I follow, there are Turkish information operations guys who post about the triumphs of the Turkish defence industry. Their lead guy says that Turkish companies are throwing million-dollar salaries at experienced American engineers with things like aerospace experience. Take that statement with a pound of salt. But I did look at a few Turkish companies that seemed to be hiring foreign expertise, and their domestic arms industry has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade, despite their broad economic problems.

They don’t pay high salaries to foreigners at all. In fact they lose local engineers to foreigners, especially the likes of Airbus, who poach them. Their only success stems from US and foreign unofficial embargoes and sanctions which has forced them to produce domestically. Turkey used to produce airplanes even in the 1940s which were then shut down by US allied governments.

https://istanbultarihi.ist/578-the-nuri-demirag-aircraft-fac...

Stuff like this isn't just trade secrets, in the US it's often ITAR-controlled and requires a security clearance. There are CFD algorithms that are classified. If you possess this information and plan to move to (or even visit) China, I imagine US immigration will look at you very closely and not simply allow you to leave to go work for Chengdu Aerospace Corporation.

> If you possess this information and plan to move to (or even visit) China, I imagine US immigration will look at you very closely and not simply allow you to leave to go work for Chengdu Aerospace Corporation.

I don't think the US border control system works like that. If you're a citizen, you never need an exit visa. IIRC, as long as you have a valid passport, you can exit and enter as you please, but if there's probable cause to suspect you of a crime they can arrest you.

China's system, on the other hand, does work like that. IIRC, anyone with any authority or access to secrets isn't allowed to have free control over their passport, and they have systems for denying people exit permission.

Do you actually understand how this works or are you theorizing? The no-fly-list exists. Security clearances are tracked.

Anyone who has been through civics 101 in the US knows this. Unless there is a warrant out for your arrest, the US government cannot stop a US citizen from leaving the country.

Even if somehow you got on the no-fly list, you can take a boat. Or drive/walk across one of the land borders. Perfectly legally.

Security clearances are a red herring. The folks working in Intel/TSMC/TI/etc fabs don't have or need security clearances. This is private technology.

> Anyone who has been through civics 101 in the US knows this

Anyone who has been through civics 102 in the US knows that there's lots of ways to get your passport taken away, and without one you're not getting far. It looks like Canada's requiring either passports or fancy drivers licenses (only available from some states), and Mexico's at least as strict.

> Anyone who has been through civics 102 in the US knows that there's lots of ways to get your passport taken away...

But that's irrelevant unless one of those ways is to "possess [ITAR-controlled and requires a security clearance] information," as one of the ancestor comments stated. If that's actually the case, someone should be able to cite law/regulation or provide examples of the practice, but no one has.

Folks with security clearances need to inform their employers about any travel plans. If the plans are suspicious, they can lose their clearance.

But they won’t be stopped at the border. They might be fired when they return though.

I doubt it is that easy thing to do. What would motivate some key researcher to move from USA/Europe to China to work on stuff that they have already done instead of exploring new frontiers? Hardly any money can buy that. Ego? Maybe few people from the wishlist will take a new job title, but you need the entire list.

On top of that, doesn’t one of the leading companies have foundries in China already? Presumably that would be a source for poaching talent.

TSMC has some older tech plants but planning more advanced plant it seems https://focustaiwan.tw/business/202107300008

Leaders in their field usually do not want to live under a totalitarian communist government.

When the dude from Alibaba got disappeared for a few weeks, I said to myself, "Well, I won't be starting my next trillion dollar business there."

Shit, I won't even go there to study kung fu! A few years back I was considering studying Bajiquan ( https://www.studymartialarts.org/school/an-wushu-internation... ), and even then, back before they started detaining random Western businessmen as spies, I figured being an ex-military officer would probably be an unnecessary risk.

If you pay them enough most people don’t care. Chinese companies routinely poach Japanese talent in car manufacturing and Taiwanese talent for chips.

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