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A_D_E_P_Ttoday at 6:27 PM1 replyview on HN

Do any of those US tech companies have large manufacturing footprints in the region? Intel has a couple of fabs in Israel, but presumably those are on the smaller side? Nvidia's work in the region is mostly R&D, isn't it?

In any case, though manufacturing may not be too badly affected, if the Iranians can pull this off, they would discourage further investment in Israel and raise the economic costs of the war for the US, which would be an geostrategic Iranian win of the "low hanging fruit" variety.


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alephnerdtoday at 7:12 PM

> US tech companies have large manufacturing footprints in the region

Yes in Israel and part of the West Bank (the Mellanox founder tried to expand Nvidia's footprint in the region - as in hiring in the West Bank and Gaza - until his daughter was murdered at Nova).

Outside of Israel, not really excluding data centers which are leased.

That said, most tech companies have already been operating in Israel for decades under constant barrages already (eg. Had a family friend who was working at the Intel fab when Hezbollah was attempting to shell it during the 2006 war and the AWS skyscraper was targeted by an ISIS suicide bomber 2 years ago but foiled).

In most cases, we in the US were already being targeted by Iranian APTs before this conflict and before 2023.

> if the Iranians can pull this off, they would discourage further investment in Israel

For much of tech, the calculus hasn't changed for investing in Israel. It's hard to find similar ecosystems for cybersecurity, defense tech, chip design, and some aspects of material sciences.

And those regions that are complementary (eg. Czechia, Poland, India), the companies are either Israeli operated or Israeli funded.

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