ARM创始人发给英国首相的公开信：呼吁政府救救ARM

以下是公开信译文：

尊敬的首相，

作为arm的创始人之一，我（指代本文作者Hermann Hauser）非常关注Arm出售给英伟达这个交易，而这封信则是我在剑桥的同事和英国的金融和电子产业的人共同签署的。

首先，我们担心成千上万名Arm员工在剑桥的工作受到影响。当总部迁往美国时，这将不可避免地导致英国失去工作机会和影响力，正如卡夫（Kraft）当初收购吉百利（Cadbury）时所看到的那样。

其次，将Arm出售给Nvidia将破坏Arm的商业模式的根本，该模式原本可以被称为半导体行业的“瑞士”，与500多家被许可人以平等的方式交易。他们大多数是Nvidia的竞争对手，当中有不少英国公司。

第三，也是最重要的，那就是从长远来看，这是国家经济主权的问题。

Arm是英国仅存的领先技术公司，Arm在手机微处理器方面占据主导地位。它的市场份额超过95％。英国受到谷歌，Facebook，亚马逊，Netflix，苹果等公司在美国技术领域的统治。由于美国总统在与中国的贸易战将技术优势“武器化”，因此除非英国拥有自己的讨价还价武器，否则英国将成为附带受害者。Arm为苹果，三星，索尼，华为以及几乎世界上所有其他品牌的智能手机提供动力，因此可以对他们施加影响。

将Arm出售给Nvidia意味着，Arm将受到美国CFIUS法规的约束。英国电子行业有数百家公司，雇用数以万计的人在其产品中使用ARM。其中许多产品出口到包括中国在内的全球主要市场，那就意味着他们都必须遵守美国CFIUS法规。

这使英国处于令人难以置信的立场，即关于允许Arm出售给谁的决定权将在白宫而不是唐宁街。主权曾经主要是一个地理问题，但是现在经济主权同样重要。将英国最强大的贸易武器交还给美国正在使英国成为美国的附庸国。

为此我们认为，必须满足以下三个条件才能完成这笔交易。且它们都必须具有法律约束力，否则将无用：
1、剑桥的工作保障。
2、Nvidia不得享有比其他Arm客户更优惠的待遇。
3、英国必须获得美国CFIUS法规的豁免，以确保英国公司不受限制地使用我们自己的微处理器技术。

出售给Nvidia的Arm的自然选择是将Arm在伦敦证券交易所公开上市，并再次使其成为英国拥有的公司，并拥有黄金股以保障国家经济安全。由于您已经花了5亿英镑帮助OneWeb走出第11章，对于英国来说，这并不像Arm那么重要，因此您可以花12亿英镑作为主要投资者在伦敦证券交易所进行IPO。首次公开募股一直是软银宣布获得流动性资金的途径。

如果您不为国家利益而进行此项交易，历史将不记你是将英国带出欧洲的人，而是记住你是那个将英国变成美国附庸国的人。

以下为英文公开信原文：

Dear Prime Minister,

As one of the founders of Arm I am extremely concerned about the proposed sale of Arm to Nvidia. This concern is shared by many of my colleagues in Cambridge, the UK financial and electronics industry who are all co-signing this letter.

Firstly, we are concerned about the impact on jobs in Cambridge where thousands of Arm employees work. When the headquarters move to the US this will inevitably lead to the loss of jobs and influence in the UK as we have seen with the Cadbury takeover by Kraft.

Secondly, the sale of Arm to Nvidia will destroy the very basis of Arm’s business model which is to be the Switzerland of the semiconductor industry dealing in an even-handed way with its over 500 licensees. Most of them are Nvidia’s competitors. Among them are many UK companies.

Thirdly, and most importantly for the long term, it is an issue of national economic sovereignty:

Arm is the only remaining UK technology company, with a dominant position in mobile phone microprocessors. It has a market share of over 95%. The UK has suffered from American technology dominance by companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Apple and others. As the American president has weaponised technology dominance in his trade war with China, the UK will become collateral damage unless it has its own trade weapons to bargain with. Arm powers the smartphones of Apple, Samsung, Sony, Huawei and practically every other brand in the world and therefore can exert influence on all of them.

A sale to Nvidia will mean that Arm becomes subject to the US CFIUS regulations. There are hundreds of companies in the UK electronics industry employing tens of thousands of people who use ARMs in their products. Many of them export to major global markets including China. They will all have to comply with the US CFIUS regulations.

This puts Britain in the invidious position that the decision about who Arm is allowed to sell to will be made in the White House and not in Downing Street. Sovereignty used to be mainly a geographic issue, but now economic sovereignty is equally important. Surrendering UK’s most powerful trade weapon to the US is making Britain a US vassal state.

There are three conditions that are imperative for this deal to be allowed to go through.

They all have to be legally binding or they are useless:

1、Job guarantees for Cambridge.
2、Nvidia must not gain any preferential treatment over other Arm licensees.
3、Britain must get an exemption from the US CFIUS regulation so that UK companies are guaranteed unfettered access to our own microprocessor technology.

The natural alternative to an Arm sale to Nvidia is to take Arm public on the London Stock Exchange and make it a British owned company again with a Golden Share for national economic security. As you have spent £500m to help OneWeb out of Chapter 11, which arguably is not as important to Britain as Arm, you could spend £1-2bn as the anchor investor for an IPO on the London Stock Exchange. An IPO was always the declared route to liquidity for Softbank.

If you do not act on this transaction in the national interest, history will remember you not as the person who took Britain out of Europe but the person who delivered Britain into American vassalage.

Yours sincerely

Dr Hermann Hauser FRS, KBE