Foxconn Has a New Vision For Whatever is Going On in Wisconsin (theverge.com) 62
Nilay Patel, reporting for The Verge: It has never been clear what Foxconn is attempting to do in Wisconsin, and every time the company or one of its executives tries to explain it, things have just gotten weirder. For example, the company has said for years that its empty warehouse in southeastern Wisconsin is the centerpiece of an "AI 8K+5G" strategy, without ever explaining what that means. (Nothing. It means nothing.)
Anyway, throw that mystery out of your brain because AI 8K+5G has been completely scrubbed from Foxconn's Wisconsin website. Instead, get ready for "3+3=infinity," which is Foxconn's new strategy, or Foxconn 3.0, which the company claims follows the famous and beloved Foxconn 1.0 and Foxconn 2.0 strategies that totally made sense and revolutionized the industrial economy of southeastern Wisconsin. Sorry! That never happened. Anyway, Foxconn's website actually labels the new plan "3+3 Transformation" and says it's a combination of "Electric Vehicle," "Digital Health," and "Fii Robotics" with "5G Solutions," "Semiconductors," and "Industrial AI," which, you see, is a list of three industries and another list of three technologies. (Fii, you will recall, is the company Foxconn created to oversee the Wisconsin project, which then created many levels of additional chaos.) How will 3+3=infinity create jobs in Wisconsin? It remains to be seen! Further reading:
Wisconsin's $4.1 Billion Foxconn Boondoggle (2018)
Why Won't Foxconn Tell Wisconsin What It's Building? (2019)
Wisconsin Report Confirms Foxconn's So-Called LCD Factory Isn't Real (2020)
Foxconn Mostly Abandons $10 Billion Wisconsin Project (2021)
Foxconn Factory Fiasco Could Leave Wisonsinites On the Hook For $300 Million (May, 2022).
Anyway, throw that mystery out of your brain because AI 8K+5G has been completely scrubbed from Foxconn's Wisconsin website. Instead, get ready for "3+3=infinity," which is Foxconn's new strategy, or Foxconn 3.0, which the company claims follows the famous and beloved Foxconn 1.0 and Foxconn 2.0 strategies that totally made sense and revolutionized the industrial economy of southeastern Wisconsin. Sorry! That never happened. Anyway, Foxconn's website actually labels the new plan "3+3 Transformation" and says it's a combination of "Electric Vehicle," "Digital Health," and "Fii Robotics" with "5G Solutions," "Semiconductors," and "Industrial AI," which, you see, is a list of three industries and another list of three technologies. (Fii, you will recall, is the company Foxconn created to oversee the Wisconsin project, which then created many levels of additional chaos.) How will 3+3=infinity create jobs in Wisconsin? It remains to be seen! Further reading:
Wisconsin's $4.1 Billion Foxconn Boondoggle (2018)
Why Won't Foxconn Tell Wisconsin What It's Building? (2019)
Wisconsin Report Confirms Foxconn's So-Called LCD Factory Isn't Real (2020)
Foxconn Mostly Abandons $10 Billion Wisconsin Project (2021)
Foxconn Factory Fiasco Could Leave Wisonsinites On the Hook For $300 Million (May, 2022).
AI 8K+5G aaS ICO (Score:5, Funny)
Foxconn abandoned it because they can't compete with my new AI 8K+5G as-a-Service Initial Coin Offering.
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Well played, sir.
It means you should pay attention (Score:5, Insightful)
Vote in your primary election. Google the Candidates. If they won't give you specific positions they support or seem overly evasive that's a red flag. Expect some evasiveness (can't scare away "moderates") but also expect them to take a stand on something besides pointless social issues and wedge issues.
Re:It means you should pay attention (Score:5, Interesting)
Foxconn seems a bad deal because a couple billion was put on line by the state, without any risk to Foxconn. This includes tens of million added to the electricity bill of local users.
If Foxconn is still spending money trying to make good on the local investment, that says something about them. I think it would be best for them just to leave. That they seem to be still be trying is a good thing.
Re:It means you should pay attention (Score:5, Insightful)
Foxconn was a bad deal because they didn't need to live up to their promises to get the reward. Without the promised jobs, the tax breaks should revert (and possibly the property ownership...I'd need to look into what kind of a purchase deal they got).
Re:It means you should pay attention (Score:4, Interesting)
Foxconn was a bad deal because they didn't need to live up to their promises to get the reward. Without the promised jobs, the tax breaks should revert (and possibly the property ownership...I'd need to look into what kind of a purchase deal they got).
According to this article [esquire.com]they had to create 260 jobs to get the $400,000,000:
Months after the 2018 groundbreaking, the company was racing to hire the 260 people needed to receive the first tranche of payments from the lucrative subsidy package passed by then-Gov. Scott Walker. Recruiters were told to hit the number but given little in the way of job descriptions. Soon, the office began to fill with people who had nothing to do. Many just sat in their cubicles watching Netflix and playing games on their phones.
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And racing electric golf carts... leaving them wherever they ended up when the charge ran out.
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Foxconn was a bad deal because they didn't need to live up to their promises to get the reward. Without the promised jobs, the tax breaks should revert (and possibly the property ownership...I'd need to look into what kind of a purchase deal they got).
According to this article [esquire.com]they had to create 260 jobs to get the $400,000,000:
Months after the 2018 groundbreaking, the company was racing to hire the 260 people needed to receive the first tranche of payments from the lucrative subsidy package passed by then-Gov. Scott Walker. Recruiters were told to hit the number but given little in the way of job descriptions. Soon, the office began to fill with people who had nothing to do. Many just sat in their cubicles watching Netflix and playing games on their phones.
Pay me $400m to hire 260 for a few months (or even a year!) I'll do it no problem.
Give companies ridiculously perverse incentives and they'll do exactly as expected.
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This had nothing to do with jobs (Score:3)
If we had a fully functional Republic there would have been a federal investigation and these guys would be in jail. This is the most brazen corruption I've ever seen in my life.
And hilariously Walker didn't get much out of it as near as I can tell. He was never very good at the grift, and it seems l
Re:This had nothing to do with jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
seems like he was tossed aside
I can remember during the Obama years Scott Walker was the "great white hope" for Republicans, the guy who was gonna lead the future vanguard of the party when in reality he was just a plain ol' stooge who probably just happened to have a legislature that would do whatever stupid things he wanted.
Once he got on a national stage it was clear he had no clear positions, no real principles and the charisma of a bad chest cold. He was succinctly tossed to the wayside and his campaign cratered almost immediately and now Wisoncsin is dealing with the after-effects of a administration that had no real purpose other than lib-ownage.
If this sounds like a repeat of what is happening with the current governor of Florida you're not wrong, but only time will tell.
Walker is a guy the party venerated for years and years. Really shows what they actually want out of their leadership; nonstop culture war, no real principles about anything.
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Pretty much, history is littered with them. I keep hearing Newsom might run in 2024 assuming Biden doesn't but I just feel like he is also going to crash and burn on a national stage just like I feel DeSantis will never get anywhere because he's doing what is a Trump simulacrum when the real deal is still around.
I think maybe in the online agre governors just don't have that pull anymore on a national level. Running in one state is a far cry from running on the nation in the age where everyone is super con
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Local officials are desperate to create jobs and improve infrastructure, as they should be
Well, they ain't gonna get'em if/when they act like a bunch of Luddites who question teaching science in school or are antagonistic to higher education. Good jobs don't just come from subsidies. It comes from network effects and local cultures that support the creation of such jobs.
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Sweetheart deals almost never work. Decades of history shows that. And yet politicians of all stripes keep offering them and keep getting taken advantage of. All a company has to do is offer a lot of jobs, they don't actually have to follow up on that offer.
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Not just Walker, the former alleged president once called "the eighth wonder of the world", and boasted it as an example of how his “America first” agenda could revive U.S. tech manufacturing. What a gormless gargoyle.
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Vote in your primary election.
For whom? Sellout party (aka Republicans) or Sell-out party (aka Democrats), or The Sell Out (aka independent)?
The word "jobs" is like kryptonite to any politician.
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How much cash was actually given to Foxconn by WI?
Curious what that "giveaway" number was?
Because the last time I checked, it was...$0.
The "$millions$" were in future tax breaks...which cost the state nothing if the company never has any taxes to pay.
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There was over $900 million in local and regional infrastructure investments made for the project to happen. Buying property through eminent domain, reconfiguring I-94 and other roads, town water and sewage systems, things like that.
All money down the drain.
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So...your answer is $0 then?
I asked you *very* specifically how much $ Wisconsin GAVE FOXCONN.
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to who you vote for. This was a cash giveaway by Scott Walker's administration. And yes, there were direct subsidies in addition to tax breaks. Plus they now own a bunch of land they got for next to nothing. . . .
FoxCONn didn't just get the land for next to nothing, eminent domain was used to take the land away from private landowners, you know, people's homes.
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It doesn't matter for whom you vote. They all do the same thing, R, D, or X. What's necessary is to make it illegal to grant tax preferences to anyone for any reason.
Evil vs incompetence (Score:3, Insightful)
By now I think FC's behavior has made it clear they never really had a plan and have no idea what they're doing. Probably a ton of internal politics and in fighting keeps them from doing anything. Clued companies don't change their plans every 3 seconds and constantly rename everything.
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By now I think FC's behavior has made it clear they never really had a plan and have no idea what they're doing. Probably a ton of internal politics and in fighting keeps them from doing anything. Clued companies don't change their plans every 3 seconds and constantly rename everything.
My guess is, the world's largest tech manufacturer probably doesn't care what your opinion is.
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True and they don't care about anyone else here on /. either so as per you we should only post and discuss articles where the subjects would care what we think.
Brilliant. You are really smart.
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I didn't say you shouldn't post or discuss articles where the object of the article doesn't care about posters' opinions; that would exclude almost everything. Evidence suggests that reality flies in the face of your opinion of Foxconn, but by all means feel free to post ad nauseam.
The obvious implication is that you don't get to be the world's largest tech manufacturer by having no idea what you're doing, and the reason FC wouldn't care about your opinion is that your opinion is obviously incorrect, but mo
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I mean exactly that. They have no idea what they're doing. This is quite common in large organizations. This shouldn't be a big news flash to anyone that big companies don't run with a single clear hive mind all in agreement and in alignment on everything. I am baffled that anyone would question this concept.
Maybe they'll weasel out, maybe they will build something and make jobs. At this point we don't know. Once it is finally resolved in some way we can see.
As far as 'getting' gobs of cash, I'm not g
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Clued companies don't change their plans every 3 seconds and constantly rename everything.
Right? Man, I get so sick of that. We have vendors come in all the time who have products that you literally cannot understand the true purpose of. The renaming is just one of many things that makes them opaque. The sales people are so full of market-droid-speak they cannot actually just tell you what the heck something is supposed to do for you. Even when they bring a sales engineer with them they are trained to not give you too many answers too fast. Since some jerkhole in management plays golf with these
Re:Evil vs incompetence (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah, they knew what they were doing. They were going to hire the bare minimum of people and build the bare minimum of a facility, which they would keep open for the bare minimum amount of time, in order to get a huge payment of taxpayer money to spend in geographic locations not named "Wisconsin."
And they are so far pulling it off with great success, at the expense of Wisconsin taxpayers, because they elected a gullible rube as governor.
Plenty of jobs to be made (Score:2)
elk grove village il is loaded with DC's and no pi (Score:2)
elk grove village il is loaded with DC's and no piped cooling like that needed
Dave from Marketing.... (Score:2)
This is why you shouldn't give companies.... (Score:4, Informative)
This is why governments shouldn't give huge tax breaks and other favors to companies with zero commitment in return. Companies make promises, but with no enforcement. If FoxConn wer required to actually hire the people they promised to hire, or give all the money back, plus a penalty, then the state would have actual jobs instead of a vague hand-wave.
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If FoxConn wer required to actually hire the people they promised to hire, or give all the money back, plus a penalty, then the state would have actual jobs instead of a vague hand-wave.
This implies the government officials that approved the massive multi-billion dollar subsidies didn't already realize most of that money (and the promises that came with it) was going to evaporate.
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That's part of the problem - the politicians want to stand up with the company and announce the awesome deal they cut, and they don't care much if the jobs don't appear. And if they tried to get the companies to make a real commitment, the company wouldn't do the deal, they'd just to go the next most desperate state and take their money in return for nothing.
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The only way this gets fixed is if there are national standards, so the states aren't competing with each other to give away our money in return for nothing.
Thanks for the chuckle (Score:3)
I used to live about a 10-15 minute drive from the site that Foxconn built their white elephant. Everyone in the area hoped it would bring some high-tech jobs to the area but, eventually, realized that it was going to be a boondoggle and/or fraud. I always find the gyrations they go through in their press releases amusing since they've got to announce something about the purpose of the site or WI taxpayers may start demanding that Foxconn pay back what they got in the deal. That something gets weirder and weirder every time---probably hoping that spouting more buzzwords and acronyms will keep the rubes from catching on.
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It's pretty obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty obvious what the entire strategy is here. The strategy is to extract as much money from Wisconsin taxpayers as possible, and redistribute it to Foxcon shareholders.
Remember kids, wealth redistribution is only bad when it's sending money to the bottom of the economic ladder. It's as American as Apple Pie when it's sending the money to the robber barons.
I love Foxcon's Name (Score:2)
Isn't it obvious? (Score:1)
Wisconsinians will be making Flux Capacitors.
Whatever is Going On in Wisconsin (Score:2)
And when Foxconn figures it out, have them tell us. Because the rest of us haven't got a clue.
People of Wisconsin.. (Score:1)
Deserved it. Hopefully this will bankrupt their pensions and crumble infrastructure even further, turning it into Detroit 2.0
Whatever it is/will be (Score:2)
I just hope the WI government doesn't give Foxconn another thin dime until they can show some actual results. Like some kind of product rolling off assembly lines or just SOMETHING.
Local government ripe for the plundering (Score:1)
just enough buzz words (Score:2)
Really bad writing (Score:2)
It'd be nice if they had someone better at writing do their stories in the future.
Destroy it. (Score:1)
Fuck Foxconn. Forcibly take it back from them and demo what they built or resell it to someone else. Either way, don't give Foxconn any money. Useless company.
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And many other vendors too, Dell for sure.
Finally! (Score:2)
I've been waiting decades for Timecube research to yield marketable applications. Thank you Foxconn, for saving America from its educated stupidity!
new things, new markets (Score:2)
Yeah. (Score:2)
Any company that works with foxconn does so at its own peril.