Former Samsung President on the Global Chip Shortage

Harman International Chair and former Samsung President and Chief Strategy Officer Young Sohn joins Emily Chang to discuss his new fund on deep tech raising $500M to invest in deep tech, and gives his insights on how big manufacturers like Apple and Samsung are scrambling to power through the global chip shortage and supply chain woes.
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I got a start on these supply chain issues. Given your
experience and many years at Samsung what’s your take on the

challenges that’s facing you know just about everyone here and
how bad this is compared to anything you’ve seen prior in your

career.
This is a pretty difficult case. I think pandemic really made it

much worse than it should be. And you know one of the things
that happened in our industry is all about just in time delivery

which was really very efficient way of running your business
with a minimum inventory when it works. It worked great fueling

the pandemic. We have different issues different factories
different products different country. They all have a different

shut down programs. And we really lost our signal. And when you
lose your signature it’s hard to regain that message. Energy you

know today electronics are not just the one part of a building.
What we build today if you look at automobiles that are 13

hundred components and the people one piece missing you are
going to have a supply disruptions. To interdependence and

complexity we are living in. So the pandemic really hurt us. And
the top of that the demand for I.T. products really went up. You

know we all have a home offices. We all need more cloud and
mobility. Information’s there. Hope to increase I.T. spending

which doesn’t hurt this. Whole issues of the supply chain are
topics on the top of that. Also semiconductor perspective. As

you were discussing this typically it takes two to three years
to build capacity and there were underinvestment as well as the

freezing investment for awhile which doesn’t help this whole
industrial issues. Right. You wonder if you know our

expectations have simply just gotten too high with this just in
time delivery that we’re all now so used to. Apple might have to

cut production of 10 million iPhones right ahead of the
holidays. I imagine Samsung is dealing with stuff. A lot of

these issues behind the scenes as well. Can you give us a
picture of what’s happening you know on the back end of these

companies just trying to make things get things together in time
for the holidays.

So I can give you two perspective. Samsung is a component
supplier. Samsung is a system maker Haidi Lun company. They’re

actually dueling out tool and audio products that are going into
these products. And basically if you look at end product

perspective Haidi Lun for instance they are supplying systems
that goes into to more theirs and every day. This is a race

trying to get the part expediting substituting product. And our
customers are trying to change their SKU mix so that they can be

able to ship their products typically which means less volume or
higher premium products. Can go on for a while but I think

eventually it’s going to catch up on that side of component
supply as Samsung which is the largest semiconductor company.

They are doing everything they can in fact to win. We announced
200 billion investment decision in semiconductor but as I told

you it takes time. It takes time to build things. It takes time
to assemble our teams. And in this process I think it’s creating

a difficult scenarios. Everybody is really working hard.
Everybody trying to accelerate it but also issues that there is

a shipment issues. If you look at the some of the disruption
that are going on in terms of the shipping the unloading

products all those things requiring also a lot of disruptions as
well.

Let’s talk about your fund then. More than half a billion
dollars to invest in early stage deep tech start. So we’re

talking about big data. We’re talking about A.I. Chips Cloud
digital biology. What are your big goals here especially in

light of what we’re seeing. The world needs right now.
You know I think that when we say deep tag it’s an area that we

actually don’t recognize the importance as much as we used to.
And you think about the way we send the people to the moon and

other defense through that spendings that helped us create new
technologies the vaccines that we all use today that are

developed within a year. And RNA would not be impossible without
our spending without the funds spending. Go ahead. That with

Curb. So I think it’s really important we think long term and I
believe that we have to use science and the disruption and

market opportunities to make an impact. And that’s what deep
tech bondage about. We think the data infrastructure data

requirements are doubling every two years. And the truth is the
current architecture the network the software and operating

system have to improve. And that’s an opportunity for people
like us. There are a lot of concerns around data privacy and

ethical A.I.. You’re seeing the battle between Apple and
Facebook or matter over our own state. And I’m wondering if

there’s any concern that not gathering enough data or not
gathering more data could slow the advancement of A.I. down.

You know I think there are is there are two different issues
right. Technology is not good or bad. It’s how we use it. And I

think the more data around our body can give you a lot more
knowledge about our health. They can give us a better proactive

diagnostic rather than reactive care that we see today which can
reduce health care costs. So that’s a clear example of data that

can give you better insight. Autonomous driving could be an
example of how we can save lives. But then how you use the data

they can be able to balance the need and advancement of our need
as well as it being able to deploy and ask away. And data is not

about there is around bias issues that we have to create. So we
need to make sure data is not biased. We need to make sure data

is used properly. So these are some of the things that we have
to think things through and we have an opportunity to work on

this.
Last quick question Young you were on the board of Armed

previously and I’m curious if you think in video is gonna get
this deal done and if you think it’s a good idea in the end.

You know I think there are two different issues. They are geo
political are tensions that are increasing. And if you think

over in the perspective of Europe perspective China and us on is
a architecture or mobile products that we use today every mobile

phone virtually use on based architecture and processor. So I
think there is a lot of attention around who controls this type

of architecture in which geographic region which is going to
create a race condition. China clearly as an document is

something they will continue to depend on US companies vice
versa. So I believe this attention will increase and we need to

mine for a vote. I also think the new architecture will come.
The architecture has been around the last 30 years. Risk 5 is

coming. Maybe something else will come. So the investment in the
tack they’re looking at new architecture. They can be able to

reduce power and they can be able to give you a new footprint to
accelerate.