Pardon a manager in prison for corruption because no one better than him could manage, and hopefully solve, the semiconductor crisis that is threatening to bring his company to its knees. It's really happening in South Korea. And the company in question is not one of many but Samsung, the flagship of the Asian country, on which a large part of its workforce, its economy and its positioning depends international. It is no coincidence that the indiscretion came out on the eve of Korean President Moon Jae-in's visit to Washington, where he will meet his American counterpart Joe Biden on Friday 21 May. In fact, the White House will also and above all talk about technology and the well-known crisis of microchips, which today are an increasingly strategic resource, to the point of being defined as the "oil of the XNUMXst century". On this front, the United States (and partly Europe too, with an important role for the Italian-French group Stmicroelectronics) have for some time launched an open challenge to Asian supremacy.
Today the basic raw material of industry in the electronic age (starting with the electric car) is produced in the Far East, under the control of two big names, the Taiwanese Tmsc and precisely the Korean Samsung, as well as several Chinese companies (China holds 15%, while the US has dropped to 12% and Europe to 8%). In March, however, the US Intel decided to invest the beauty of 20 billion dollars to start up two new chip factories in America. This move clearly worries Samsung, which is the largest tech group on the planet and brings together 70 technology companies. For this reason, the Korean industrial and financial world has openly asked President Moon Jae-in to find a way to bring back CEO Lee Jae-yong, currently in prison where he is serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence for corruption. “Our semiconductor industry is going through a difficult moment – writes the economic elite in an appeal -. If we accumulate delays in making decisions on investments and strategic choices due to the absence of a manager, the country risks losing its technological leadership”.
At the moment Samsung and other Asian companies have a near-monopoly position, but they are getting overwhelmed by a sudden jump in demand, mainly due to the faster-than-expected recovery of the automotive industry: to convey the idea, to build a single car electric up to 100 microchips are needed. And on Friday 21 May, the Korean president will visit his rivals' homes, given that - moreover - Biden absolutely intends to throw down the gauntlet and is fully supported on this front and indeed urged by Parliament.
