>France and Germany and the Netherlands may compete with each other to attract VC and tech firms, but they're ultimately no more capable of preventing each other from getting a runaway success loop than New York and Utah were at preventing California from getting actual Silicon Valley.

Yes, but why hasn't said success loop occurred anywhere else yet? Silicon Valley has been a "thing" for five decades now.

> The EU as an institution just doesn't wield any magic wand of creating things like that to be fought over, just like Washington DC also doesn't.

What I meant is that every time HN or elsewhere talks about Europe being behind the US in terms of tech there is mention of the need for a "European Silicon Valley". But that is going to require a level of support that is probably beyond the scale of one national government.

The EU can trace its origins back to France and Germany agreeing to combine its coal and steel.[1] Berlin and Paris would be happy to designate, say, the Strasbourg-Stuttgart axis as the "EU technology hub", with corresponding EU funding, but other member states aren't going to be happy.

[1] And further to the long wrangling over Alsace-Lorraine, but that's neither here nor there