Since last Wednesday, I have been waiting for today's article to say that we are on the cusp of an amazing civilizational and industrial leap, and under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi youth will re-invent the future and the map of the global economy and the region as a whole. After the war, who among us has not heard of the stories and heroisms written by Japanese and German scientists after World War II and their ability to return to the markets and the economy with the power of engines.
There is the story of the Japanese young man who traveled to study in Germany and then came back and learned how to make an engine, and there is another story about a person named Toyoda who managed to develop the first engine for an automatic machine for knitting fabric in Japan, and from there he set out to manufacture automobile engines, and certainly we have heard about Karl Benz the first Whoever made an engine for cars and drove them, and you might be surprised if you knew that when German industry began to compete with the English industry in its colonies on which the sun never sets, the English protectionism had to put on German products the phrase “made in Germany”, on the grounds that this was enough to say that it was the least quality, but this turned into a commercial advantage that the whole world is looking for later, and in short, it was the production and reproduction of the engine “in all its forms and sizes” that created all the mighty economic power of the two machines: Japanese and German, and the engine industry was the source of wealth in the first, second and third industrial revolutions. Whoever had the ability to manufacture engines from the first moments of metal casting to the manufacture of gears, wheels and electric circuits and to run the engine with fuel at the end of the track will find himself at the top of the global economy and a member in the Group of Seven.
But with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it seems different, as the engine industry is no longer the line between the industrial state and others, but rather it is semiconductors, and the difference between the role of the semiconductor industry and the engine industry today is like the difference between the steam engine and the internal combustion engine, and who will have the ability to manufacture those chips He will reserve a seat among the seven big ones if he does not take those seats from them, for everything today has become dependent on those small chips that cannot be seen from afar, and if you are like me with glasses, you will find it difficult to see their details if they are in your hands, but it is enough to stop production A major country such as China, the few months following the spread of the Corona virus have proven that there is a crisis in the manufacturing of those chips, as China, which produces chips worth $100 billion, imports more than $300 billion from them, and the contribution of the semiconductor technology industry to the global economy is seven Trillions of dollars annually, including 3.3 trillion dollars in contributions to the electronics and computer sector, and in the field of general industries, the annual contribution is estimated at 2.3 trillion dollars, and in the field of vehicles and the transportation sector 1.4 trillion dollars.
The semiconductor industry, just like motors, needs foundries and special and complex production lines and requires time, effort and high technical knowledge, and there are those who believe that it may take more than ten years to develop some of the tools of this industry. Whoever is able to be self-sufficient in this industry, starting with manufacturing its tools and manufacturing them until they are available, will have domination of the global economy for long periods of time. Nothing can work today without it. No communications, machine intelligence, nor the Internet of things can work without providing these chips and in large quantities and without Exposure to problems in their supply chains, and those who will still be unable to manufacture them themselves will be like those who did not make engines in the last century, looking admiringly at others and contemplating the wonder of their industry, while spending all that he saves and all the food and energy he produces in order to win those technologies.
I am not exaggerating when I say that the announcement by the Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology to manufacture the first smart chips inside the Kingdom with Saudi hands and minds was an amazing announcement with all the details, with all the huge promises it holds in the near future, God willing, with all the great hopes placed on it. We manufacture this electronic chip as if we were We recall those critical moments from the age of the global economy when Karl Benz made the engine and when the Japanese factory machine took off forcefully to impose its presence on the world stage, it was as if our role had been resolved, and our industry had launched with the manufacture of these chips locally and has a processing power of more than 60 thousand times than In smart phones and what giant companies use, such as "Apple", "Google", "Microsoft", "Amazon", "IBM", "Sixo", "Oracle" and "Alibaba".
The Minister of Communications confirmed that the local manufacturing process of these magic chips came through the directives and support of the Saudi Crown Prince, Prince Muhammad bin Salman, and that is why the celebration in which he was announced was called “Launch”, and there is no doubt that it is a very successful choice because we are actually launching under the leadership of the Crown Prince. A new economic phase with integrated elements, and what confirms this talk is the great desire of international companies to join the project and the accompanying projects such as training and so on.
Quoted from Al-Eqtisadiah
