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joe_mambayesterday at 11:00 PM0 repliesview on HN

>The value is not in the literal buildings, the value is in the people, the managers,engineers,etc and the owners who know how to run it.

Holy shit, finally someone who understands this, this comments needs to be to the top.

Same thing happened in my ex-commie country when the communists kicked out the capitalists, shipped them to UK, US, Switzerland, and took over their factories. Over years and decades, those factories became inefficient and went bust under state control, while those capitalists who got kicked out flourished by making new business in their new homes that were business-friendly countries.

Just because you seize factories doesn't mean anything if you don't know what to do, they're just commodity equipment anyone else can buy within walls and a roof. The people with the secret-sauce know-how and IP are just as if not more valuable.

That's why US had operation Paperclip.

If you go to a TSMC factory, you'll find the same ASML EUV machines every other country and and company on the planet (minus China) has access to buy, but yet only TSMC can extract the smallest nodes and highest yields because only they managed to perfect the entire process.