Doug, are you sure that is a sound prediction?
This is from the article that Joe reacted on:
"However, according to Spiegel, the Chancellor's office has said AMD will get permission to transfer its technology. One stumbling block is that Gerhard Schroeder may not be the Chancellor for long - any future holder of this post may take a different view and impose further restrictions."
Here's a bit more from the source the Inq used for it's story (der Spiegel; babelfished but still quite reasonable translation):
Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder could partly divert the technology company AMD of his plans to shift large parts of its production engineering from Dresden to Singapore. In several discussions the managing directors were persuaded by AMD in the chancellorship later in such a way to change their export request for the production engineering of the microprocessors Athlon and Opteron that in the high-subsidized location Dresden all too large damage does not develop. Originally the enterprise wanted to shift not only the production engineering of their so-called 90-Nanometer-Technologie to Asia, but also research and development of the new 65-Nanometer-Technik, for which a second work was to be built. Schroeder feared the loss of 1000 jobs. When return permits the government the delicate transfer of technology, which so far several Ministries, but also representatives of the Federal Information Service did not only criticize violently. The Federal Intelligence Service saw above all the danger of a further bleeding of know-how, which can be used also militarily, if the AMD technology is passed on from Singapore to China. These doubts do not have Ministry of Economic Affairs, Foreign Office and the Federal Office for economics and export control now obviously no more. "AMD can count firmly on a permission of its export request", says the responsible coworker in the chancellorship.
I think based on the above article that both current and future chancellor will permit the transfer that's currently on the table. Still there's a far bigger chance that the transfer will happen with the current government: Maybe the chance that a next chancellor's office will allow the transfer as low as 60% (wild guess of course...).
I find it a bit peculiar, and can't believe, that AMD wanted transfer research and development to Chartered. I think that what they meant was transfering 65nm process currently in development to Chartered (which means that future R&D would stay at Dresden). I furthermore also think that the German government who is protecting their investment is doing so at the cost of AMD's margin, which I don't particularly like.
Regards,
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