On the other hand, the amount of money you can actually make on electronics manufacturing pales in comparison to the money that can be made selling software for those devices. The margins in electronics suck, and this is coming from someone who really enjoys doing electronics design.
It's also worth noting that in a lot of areas the software effort required to make things work well dwarfs the work that goes into the physical hardware, both in terms of money and engineer time. Anyone can spin up a board with some chips but actually doing all the bringup/drivers/DSP/UI requires a ton of skill and effort.
I think it's probably ok to let Asia have this and worry about staying ahead on all the tons of stuff that has to go on top.
> I think it's probably ok to let Asia have this and worry about staying ahead on all the tons of stuff that has to go on top.
Why does it have to be mutually exclusive? We should have a strong manufacturing base in addition to being strong in software and "stuff that has to go on top".
Specialization and development takes resources away from other things. Just getting people to move in any given direction alone takes political capital that could otherwise be used for other things.
That's not to say we should abandon it as there are national security concerns inherent to not being able to manufacture electronics in the country, but we shouldn't stress ourselves over being the world leaders in the maximum possible generation of plastic+FR4 shit.
> Anyone can spin up a board with some chips but actually doing all the bringup/drivers/DSP/UI requires a ton of skill and effort.
I disagree. As an embedded software engineer myself, there's a ton of driver work out there that's hacky, low-quality work coming out of cheap areas... and we still rely on it. The niches for high-value software design related to hardware are shrinking rapidly.
It's also worth noting that in a lot of areas the software effort required to make things work well dwarfs the work that goes into the physical hardware, both in terms of money and engineer time. Anyone can spin up a board with some chips but actually doing all the bringup/drivers/DSP/UI requires a ton of skill and effort.
I think it's probably ok to let Asia have this and worry about staying ahead on all the tons of stuff that has to go on top.