Poland Is a Center of Intellectual Neocolonialism

Michał Karbowiak: Who is the most important Pole in Silicon Valley?

Piotr Moncarz: Probably one of our AI experts. But I’m not going to get myself into trouble by giving names. (laughs)

Steve Wozniak, Stanley Wojcicki: Polish Stars in Silicon Valley

And historically?

Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, is recognized around the world. And there have been many outstanding Polish engineers at Intel, Apple, and other technology giants. We’ve also had outstanding scientists, including Prof. Jerzy Lerski, a political scientist, historian, courier for the Polish Government-in-Exile, and Prof. Stanisław Wójcicki, known in the United States as Stanley Wojcicki. He chaired Stanford’s physics department, a true “Nobel Prize factory.” Together with his wife, Esther, they raised three daughters: Susan, a pioneering Google executive and longtime CEO of YouTube; Janet, a distinguished physician and professor at UCSF; and Anne, co-founder of 23andMe.

Who has been the most influential Pole in Silicon Valley?

It’s difficult to point to just one person. Tad Taube comes to mind, an entrepreneur and philanthropist who was born in Kraków and grew up in the United States. Throughout his years in Silicon Valley, he never forgot about Poland. Now his wife, Dianne Taube, who was recently appointed Honorary Consul, has taken on that role. The Taube family’s commitment to promoting Poland cannot be overstated. And then there is a long list of other names, from world-renowned figures such as Czesław Miłosz to Adam Drewniany, who rescued Tesla during a technological crisis.

Who among the younger generation has the greatest potential for global success?

You’re trying to get me into trouble again... The more names that come to mind, the more certain I am that I’ll leave someone out. So let me apologize in advance. There are some exceptional people associated with our Poland in Silicon Valley Center for Science, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (PolSV). For example, Agata Braja, who holds a master’s degree in engineering from Warsaw University of Technology and an MBA from Stanford, with extensive international experience and continued involvement at Stanford. There is also a generation of young, enthusiastic Poles involved with Vistula Valley. Michał Majerczak is certainly someone I’m betting on. He has extraordinary drive, personal charisma, and a deep understanding of technology trends.

Another tremendous asset for Poland is Dr. Dominik Schmidt, a UC Berkeley alumnus. Dominik holds two doctoral degrees as well as an MBA from Stanford University. He has held senior positions at technology giants including Intel, managed international organizations, founded and led startups, and directed the construction of semiconductor fabs in the United States and Asia. Today, he co-manages a multibillion-dollar fund.

There is also Dr. Luke Kowalski, Senior Vice President at Oracle and a highly influential figure. I could go on and on...

Piotr Moncarz: Roots and Family

Where in all this is Dr. Piotr Moncarz – engineer, retired Stanford professor, failure analysis expert, one of the people behind the success of Exponent, now worth nearly $4 billion, and co-founder of the groundbreaking XGS Energy?

Where? In the very heart of Silicon Valley: Palo Alto. This is where I ended up and found my place.

Apparently, you didn’t end up there entirely by your own choice.

In a way, Palo Alto was my wife Anita’s choice. When you marry a woman who is smarter than you and ten times stronger-willed, you have to live with the consequences. (laughs) I’ve been living with them for 50 years now, which is how long we’ve been married.

You met Anita Habdank-Kołaczkowska in Munich.

Her father, Ryszard Habdank-Kołaczkowski, worked for Radio Free Europe in Munich, where, at the time, I was a poor, somewhat lost young engineer trying to find my place in the world. By chance, I ended up at a Polish May 3rd celebration in 1974, where I was checking tickets at the door. She walked past me and simply swept me off my feet. I’ve been in that state ever since. Even our children have their mother’s last name because, on our wedding day, I was ready to agree to anything. (laughs)

Wasn’t your family surprised? Even today, this is very rare in Poland.

My loved ones had no problem with it; they believed that if we decided on it together, that’s how it should be. I was born and raised in Poznań, where I graduated from the Secondary Technical School of Surveying and Road Construction, specializing in road and bridge construction. So my engineering journey started in high school. That technical school had a huge impact on me. I had excellent teachers—engineers from Lwow who couldn’t pursue academic careers in communist Poland and therefore, on the sidelines of their work in construction companies, dedicated themselves to teaching at the school.

As a young boy, did you dream of studying in Western Europe or the US?

In the US? I’m not sure I even knew where that was on the map (laughs).

At one point, London was the dream. I was even heading there with a suitcase full of books, but the bus broke down.

A bus?

Really, the axle snapped. Instead of waiting for the repair, I decided to visit friends in nearby Munich.

I was supposed to stay for two weeks; I stayed for almost two years. I earned extra money at a parish and in a shop. To this day, I remember carrying crates of tomatoes. I learned German, went to university, and, most importantly, met my future wife.

Why did you ultimately decide to move to the United States?

At the suggestion of the dean at my university in Munich. I had gone to complain that they were making me retake courses I had already completed in my undergraduate studies. In the middle of our conversation, he said, “You know, if I were you, I’d already be at the airport waiting for a flight to the States.”

And just like that, you decided to go?

I went home and told Anita the story as an anecdote. She immediately reacted, “America is great. I’ve been there many times. What’s stopping you from applying?”

Did you apply to the University of Colorado Boulder, where you eventually earned your master’s degree?

We probably wrote to 40 universities, but that wasn’t one of them. Anita didn’t want to live in the middle of the country. In every application, I made it clear that I needed financial support from the start because I had no money to live on. So most of those applications probably went straight into the trash. A few universities politely wrote back to say they didn’t offer financial support from day one.

So how did you end up at the University of Colorado?

It’s a long story, but in short, my friend Prof. Piotr Noakowski, who at that time was a PhD assistant at the Technical University of Munich, recommended me to the head of his department. He, in turn, had a childhood friend in Boulder, Professor Kurt Gerstle. Professor Gerstle accepted me, and the University of Colorado wrote to say that I could study there with an assistantship. I was over the moon. My English was so terrible, though, that I spent almost all my time in the lab just so I wouldn’t have to talk too much. To my surprise, after I finished my master’s, they asked me to stay for a PhD.

Quite a success.

Yes, except Anita said, “I’m not staying in this backwater.” So I had to start applying to universities all over again. (laughs) The answer came from Stanford. My interest in steel connections gave me an edge, as they were critical to the seismic resistance of structures, a passion of Stanford professor Helmut Krawinkler. California, after all, is crossed by the San Andreas Fault and faces the constant threat of earthquakes. That’s how we ended up in Palo Alto, and how I came to earn my PhD at Stanford.

You later returned as an experienced expert and taught there for 35 years. Did any of your students go on to become famous?

I crossed paths with brilliant minds, and they crossed paths with me. If they took something away from those encounters, I’m very glad. But to say that I made them who they are would be arrogant.

You strike me as very “American” in your courage, openness to change, and talent for languages.

That’s true, if being American means being willing to take risks. Those who went to the "Wild West" were extreme risk-takers. They could have remained cheap labor on the East Coast, but they wanted something better. That is America. America relies on entrepreneurship. And entrepreneurship isn’t about simply showing up for work at a factory. It’s about searching for something better, a solution, something inspiring. But there is one thing I have to disagree with.

What’s that?

I don’t have a talent for languages. What I do have is a strong instinct to overcome obstacles. If I know I have to do something, I simply do it. That’s how I learned languages like German and English. If an important step in my life depended on learning Chinese, I would learn Chinese. But if I were learning it just for the sake of it, even 20 years wouldn’t be enough.

Why Poland Is Missing from the Global Map of Science

Did you enjoy your conversation with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski during the recent meeting in Silicon Valley?

Very much so. Minister Sikorski knows America and understands America. In fact, I first met him in the late 1980s, shortly after he returned from Afghanistan. He was saying: “I’ve seen the end of the Soviet Union.” We looked at him as if he were crazy.

And how did Sikorski react when you told him, “Poland is missing from the global map of science and technology”? Unless, of course, you didn’t tell him directly what you’ve said so many times in public.

I did. I’m not going to fabricate a new opinion just for the visit of the Deputy Prime Minister. (laughs) But seriously, I told him what I’ve been saying for years.

Which is?

For one thing, Poland needs to significantly improve its cooperation with the “diaspora,” as Minister Sikorski calls it, or with “Polonia,” as I prefer to call it.

How should Poland do that?

The professional Polish diaspora, people who build companies abroad, conduct research, and work at universities, must be taken seriously. We cannot have a situation where Polonia knocks on the door begging: "Let us do something." Poland should be the one coming forward with proposals for joint initiatives. Frankly, I have the impression that before 1989, things worked more efficiently in this regard.

Under communist rule?

Back then, it was clear that the democratic opposition in Poland had to be supported. We wrote letters, pestered American senators, and lobbied anyone we could on issues concerning Poland. Afterwards, that stopped. Poland became a democracy, but new challenges emerged: economic ones and the need to build international recognition for Poland’s science. The fact that Polish universities rank in the fifth and sixth hundreds of the Shanghai Ranking is a scandal. But I insist that the problem is not a lack of quality.

Then what is the problem?

It is a matter of mindset and a lack of understanding of how to build visibility and recognition. What good is it to be super brilliant if I sit behind closed doors? No one will ever know what I’m doing. And that is Poland’s problem.

Closing the Chasm Between Science and Business. The TOP 1000 Innovators Program

So Polish universities are excellent, but the world simply doesn’t want to recognize it?

I didn’t say that. But you’re not going to draw me into cheap criticism of my colleagues in Poland either. I maintain Polish universities are still capable of educating outstanding specialists. But I can tell you what needs to change, and it needs to change as quickly as possible.

What needs to change?

We need to close the chasm separating Polish universities from the business world. We are missing a lot of opportunities to accomplish something great by bringing these two worlds together. Today, outstanding scientists develop solutions that just "sits on a shelf," while companies struggle to source what they need in Poland in time. The result? They buy them abroad.

How do we close that chasm?

At PolSV, we created the TOP 1000 Innovators program precisely to bring these two worlds together. We are building on the experience of the TOP 500 Innovators program, which I co-created. We brought 500 outstanding young Polish scientists to world-class universities, where they saw firsthand how those institutions operate, developed soft skills, and built professional networks. Today, those 500 people are already changing Poland. Now we want to apply that experience to collaboration with businesses and startups.

When will the program launch?

The program is already underway, but unlike TOP 500, it lacks permanent ministerial funding. We’re operating on a shoestring budget. I hope Poland’s decision-makers will finally take an interest in it.

So what’s missing is systemic support?

What’s missing are clear, repeatable mechanisms for cooperation between Poland and its professional Polonia. Let me give you an example. Together with Dominik Schmidt, we wanted to create a Polish-American fund that would combine capital from his $10 billion fund with contributions from the Polish Development Fund (PFR) and Polish state-owned companies. It could have been a game changer for Polish businesses. We spoke with PFR leadership, and everything was going well until, at the final stage, the idea got bogged down in bureaucracy.

It's the same story with the budget for our PolSV center. Everything had been agreed with Dariusz Wieczorek, then Minister of Science and Higher Education, and subsequently with Minister Marcin Kulasek. Both fully understand the need for a Polish think tank in Silicon Valley. In the end, however, it turned out that there are no procedures to transfer those funds. We are almost entirely self-funded.

Why is this center so important?

In America, relationships matter: who you know, the relationships you have built, and the trust you have developed over decades. This cannot be achieved by government officials or diplomats. It can only be done by Poles working for many years in Silicon Valley’s businesses and academia. And that potential is still being wasted. Let’s take semiconductors as an example.

The Semiconductor Race: Is the TEEMA Investment in Miękinia an Opportunity for Poland?

What about semiconductors?

Within our Polonia community, we have people who have built major semiconductor fabs and designed semiconductor manufacturing processes. They know this industry inside out. And what is Poland doing? We’re focusing on Taiwan. Someone will come and build a little factory. Instead, we could seize this moment to make Poland a global player in a strategically important field.

“A little factory?” The planned Taiwanese TEEMA technology park in Miękinia, Lower Silesia, is expected to create as many as 40,000 jobs over time. TEEMA represents more than 3,000 Taiwanese electrical and electronics companies, while Taiwan produces 60 percent of the world’s semiconductors, including 90 percent of the most advanced chips.

Let’s take this one step at a time. The figure of 40,000 jobs is certainly impressive. But Poland’s fundamental problem is not a lack of jobs. The problem is that Poland does not have a global high-tech company on the scale of Samsung or Taiwan’s TSMC. TSMC, by the way, was founded at roughly the same time as Poland began its post-communist transformation. Today, TSMC is worth three times as much as the ENTIRE Polish stock market and operates at the cutting edge of global technology.

Building a company like that would transform Poland’s position among the world’s technology leaders. That is the scale of ambition I’m talking about, and I’m thinking about how we can help make it happen. Taiwan is obviously a technology powerhouse. But real technological capability is not about assembling servers or building battery parks. Real technological capability means having a semiconductor fab that can produce chips below 10 nanometers. I dream of a fab owned by a Polish company, producing chips with an increasing contribution from Polish science and engineering, rather than simply serving as an assembly plant for a foreign owner. No such fab exists anywhere in Europe today, let alone in Central and Eastern Europe.

I think the Polish government is also considering how to make such a vision a reality. But its approach is: “Partner with the Taiwanese, who have already done it.” Your approach is: “Bring in Polish experts with deep roots in the United States.” But you still haven’t identified where the capital for such an investment would come from.

Members of the Polish diaspora will always have a stronger personal connection to Poland than a foreign investor will. That is why the best approach would be to leverage the relationships and expertise we already have and build semiconductor manufacturing capability in Poland with American capital. Poland would hold a “golden share” in the venture, and it would be a Polish semiconductor.

What makes you so sure American investors would get on board?

Poland's relations with America are the best in Europe, so if not Poland, then who else? The United States is pumping billions of dollars into semiconductors because it has realized how dangerous exclusive reliance on Taiwan is. If China were to blockade the island, the global economy would grind to a halt... The needs of both the United States and Europe are enormous. This is an extraordinary opportunity, a train we need to get on right now. For Poland, this is even more important than the Central Communication Port, or CPK. Europe produces only 5–10 percent of the semiconductors it consumes, while Eastern Europe produces virtually none.

Here again, the basic idea does not seem so different from the government’s. Deputy Minister of Development and Technology Michał Jaros has described the Miękinia investment as “bringing Poland into 21st-century industrial production.”

I hope it succeeds. But there is still a significant risk that very little technology will actually be transferred to Poland through this project. I don’t know of cases where Taiwanese companies have transferred their technology to another country. They tend to create “IP islands,” where the intellectual property remains entirely under their control. There is one important lesson we can learn from Taiwan: it built its technological strength with American capital, starting with acquired technology licenses. They used that opportunity so effectively that if Taiwan stopped producing semiconductors today, half the world would have a sleepless night. Show me one sector in Poland with that kind of global importance.

Intellectual Neocolonialism

It’s hard to name one.

Exactly. Because Poland is a country of intellectual neocolonialism. It is like colonial-era Angola, where the Belgians came to mine diamonds. The diamonds were then cut and polished in Antwerp and sold at a huge markup. Meanwhile, people in Angola were satisfied because the mines provided jobs. But eventually the diamonds ran out, the hole was left behind, and the investors left.

What does this intellectual neocolonialism look like in practice?

Global corporations open R&D centers in Poland, taking advantage of our brilliant engineers and programmers. But the added value and intellectual property ultimately build the brand and wealth of the companies’ foreign headquarters.

That is why a company like Nvidia, with 30,000 engineers, can be worth 1,000 times more than Asseco, which employs nearly as many engineers. Nvidia’s market value, meanwhile, is far greater than Poland’s entire GDP, even though Poland has 700,000 engineers. Nvidia owns world-class technologies and can employ engineers in Poland, but the profits and the value created remain in the United States.

This exponential growth in the value of the world’s leading technology companies is accelerating every day. Even Anthropic, a company only five years old, has already reached a valuation of nearly $1 trillion, roughly 20 times that of Orlen.

By that logic, Poland is also being colonized by corporations from Palo Alto, where you live...

I understand those corporations. What I don’t understand is Poland watching this happen and doing nothing about it. The question is not why the Belgian went to Angola for diamonds. That is perfectly understandable. The question is why Angola allowed those diamonds to be extracted without using them to build a future for the country. That is the problem. Poland is a developed country with enough historical experience to understand that this process cannot continue indefinitely. A country cannot afford to keep losing its intellectual diamonds. We need to build our own centers of expertise and create our own products. TSMC did not initially have its own technology either. It acquired licenses from Philips and, over time, took that technology further and improved it dramatically. Their goal was to own the technology, not simply to provide jobs in someone else’s factory.

So how should Poland build its own centers of expertise and develop its own products?

That’s what we’ve been talking about all along. We need to stay on top of global trends, including semiconductors. We must boldly invest in promising sectors, tapping into the knowledge and relationships that are either in Poland or held by Poles living in other countries. We need to connect science and business as quickly as possible. We don't need to reinvent the wheel; it's worth looking at how and what others are doing.

We can start by acquiring licenses and using them as a foundation for further development. But every subsequent investment must serve the goal of building a significant market and financial position.

I’ll say it again: we need to find a field where, if Poland stopped producing, many people around the world would lose sleep.

That opportunity exists right now because AI-driven demand for semiconductors is going to increase tenfold. But the goal must be to establish Poland’s position in the global ecosystem of semiconductor intellectual property ownership and manufacturing.

Creating a few thousand jobs, even in a state-of-the-art facility located in Poland but controlled by a foreign owner, cannot take precedence over that goal.

What role do “professors in their sixties” have in all of this? I ask because, during one debate, you said that “they’re not the ones who come up with innovations.” That sounds somewhat paradoxical coming from a retired scientist.

There are exceptions. (laughs) Professors in their sixties should help those whose energy and ambition have not yet been flattened by the realities of everyday life. They should help them bring out the very best in themselves and in the people around them. For the common good.

Interview by Michał Karbowiak