About Craig Barrett
Craig Barrett, former CEO and chairman of Intel, has continued to speak publicly about U.S. competitiveness, education reform, and the semiconductor industry. In a 2025 appearance at the Global Quantum Forum, Barrett discussed the trajectory of Moore’s Law and the development of the quantum computing ecosystem, noting that multiple qubit modalities have continued to progress over 25 years and that the trend of exponential growth in computing is “very convincing.” He also referenced the observation that human beings are “terrible at understanding the impact of exponential technologies.” Across numerous appearances from 2011 to 2021, Barrett has consistently argued that the U.S. K-12 education system is underperforming, citing international test scores and the percentage of students at grade level. He has said that the system lacks accountability and that “there is no silver bullet” to fix it, advocating for high expectations, well-trained teachers, and internationally benchmarked assessments. Barrett has also discussed the importance of STEM education for economic competitiveness, noting that companies like Intel hire the best talent globally and that a U.S. workforce that is not as well-trained as foreign workforces is a disadvantage. He has been involved with the BASIS charter school network in Arizona, which he said has produced four of the top 10 high schools in the country according to certain rankings.
Transcript (19 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Interviewer0:00
As I say quickly, why stick with Ireland even when you don't have to?
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Craig Barrett0:03
There are really two reasons to be involved with Ireland. One is just the history of my involvement. I was involved with Intel when we came to Ireland in 1989, and I had 20 years of watching the facility grow, working with the people, seeing the joint success—success for Intel investing here, and I think the success for Ireland by helping to make that investment. That's only one reason. The second reason is my grandmother came from Ireland, so I have a long history in this area.
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Interviewer0:35
In terms of the Irish Technology Leadership Group, why take on such a big role?
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Craig Barrett0:43
Well, first of all, I'm involved in the issue of competitiveness of nations. I've been very involved in this topic in the U.S. Ireland is undergoing the same internal assessment of what does Ireland want to be next. A lot of foreign direct investment has come in from companies like Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and others, but how will the Irish economy continue to grow? What are the necessary elements? This is where the ITLG really plays an integral role. Looking at entrepreneurship in Ireland, how do you have indigenous growth? How do you get growth of Irish-based companies? You have a series of executives who are in Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurship is king, trying to bring that experience and capability back to Ireland. I find it immensely interesting and exciting.
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Interviewer1:36
What are the key obstacles you face in trying to bring that spirit of can-do that defines Silicon Valley back to a country that has its problems right now?
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Craig Barrett1:45
I think there are a couple of challenges. One is growing the universities in Ireland with an industrial association—not doing applied research, but basic research, in association with industry, bringing industry researchers into the university, transferring ideas and people out of the university, trying to make the Irish universities look like a Stanford or an MIT. That's one aspect of the challenge. The other aspect is really societal: the entrepreneurial nature of risk-taking. What does it take to start a company? When you start high-tech companies, most of them are going to fail. So what are the ramifications of failure in Ireland, and how do you overcome those societal challenges to risk-taking here? I find these two topics key to economic growth for Ireland going forward. I've seen them work in the United States, and I'd love to work with ITLG to bring that capability back to Ireland.
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Interviewer2:46
In Silicon Valley and the United States in general, I've always found that failure is almost a mark that you've tried—it's a good thing in some ways, you've taken that risk. It doesn't always seem to be the way in Irish enterprise culture and Irish society in general.
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Craig Barrett3:00
I have to say, that's the big challenge. You look at business startups in Silicon Valley, and usually the principals associated with a startup can list the two or three companies they worked with before that went belly up and failed, and they use that experience on their resume in a positive way. Now, if you come to Ireland and say you went bankrupt, as best I understand, that gives you a 12-year black mark on your record. The banks can still come after you for debts associated with loans associated with that bankruptcy. But if Ireland wants to be successful in the 21st century, it's going to have to do it building up from within. It's not going to be foreign direct investment like it was for the last two decades; it's going to be growth from universities, growth from smart Irish citizens, growth from smart ideas coming out of universities, entrepreneurial startups. Ireland has to learn how to do this.
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Interviewer3:59
At the moment, obviously Ireland is going through economic difficulties. If you were talking to a fellow Silicon Valley pioneer and they asked you why should we go to Ireland, why should we pay attention, what would your response be?
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Craig Barrett4:12
Well, first of all, you've got a lot of Irish expats in Silicon Valley, and they still have a very close association and a real desire to give something back to their home country. It's not difficult to convince those people at all. If you're talking to venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, they want to put their money where they get the best return. If good ideas are coming out of Ireland or good ideas coming out of Stanford, they'll fund either one. So I don't think that's a difficult issue. The challenge is to structure Ireland with universities, with researchers, with research funds to spin off smart people and smart ideas that can change the world. The next Yahoo, the next Google, the next Netscape, the next Intel—that's what has to come out of Ireland.
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Interviewer5:06
What economic spaces do you think Ireland should be in or has a competitive advantage in at the moment where we could be the next new thing?
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Craig Barrett5:13
I think that Ireland should build off the base that it has. A lot of that base has come from foreign direct investment—companies like Intel, pharmaceutical companies. So there are a couple of very obvious areas that Ireland can focus on: nanotech, biotech, pharma. Those areas you can build off the base that's already here; you don't have to reinvent something totally new. If that's not good enough, you look at the European Union or the United States. They each have a game plan. These are the technologies which are key for the future: nanotech and nano-microelectronics, biotech, photonics, new materials, alternative energy. Ireland's not a big country; Ireland needs to pick a few of those topics, concentrate, be in the top 10 in the world, and then Ireland can be an innovative company. But lots of work to do—build up the universities, build up the research, build up the entrepreneurial spirit.
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Interviewer6:20
In terms of... I'll just stop for a moment where we left this train. Old tech interview interrupting. We're checking out his carbon footprint. I'll just pick that up. There's how many audiences there are? How many people are in the trained... Well, this is actually probably going to have a dual audience—the people on the night of the 15th will be watching this, but also we're trying to put it on the web, so that might be an Irish audience as well. Great, I'll just pick it up. This is my last few questions. You, more than anyone else, can tell us about the role of multinationals in Ireland, particularly American multinationals. How important do you think they have been to where Ireland is today?
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Craig Barrett6:58
I think they're incredibly important. If you go back in history 20 years, what brought that multinational investment to Ireland? There were really a couple of things. The European Commission at one time threatened multinationals with something called local content: you had to have manufacturing capacity in Ireland and the EU if you wanted to sell into the EU, and Ireland was a great spot to set the location up. Now, the EU never went through with that threat of local content, but it was a driving force to establish outposts here. The other thing Ireland did very intelligently was to lower their corporate tax rate. It's a great incentive to multinationals to come and invest, to allow them to give a greater return to their shareholders. And then there was a third feature I think was important: Ireland had a pretty good education system. There's an abundance of well-educated workers here just waiting to be employed in Ireland. Previously, you'd been exporting most of them outside of Ireland when they finish their education.
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Interviewer7:59
Can I ask you finally about the Irish in Silicon Valley? How important do you think they have been in the story of this incredible place, this incredible information revolution?
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Craig Barrett8:10
You know, it's not just the Irish entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is a community of immigrants—they come from India, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, from Ireland, from the UK. There's an interesting thing about those immigrants: if you're brave enough to be an immigrant, if you accept the risk of picking up and going to a new spot, you're probably not risk-averse to starting a new company. A nation of immigrants, or a collection of immigrants, is a collection of entrepreneurs. So the Irish have been very important, but not by themselves. They have a strong community, a strong presence there. What we need to do is take that sense of risk-taking that those Irish entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley have and somehow translate that back here to Dublin, translate it back here to Ireland. We need that same sense of risk-taking here. Society needs to accept that model—that it's all right to take a risk, it's all right to fail—and that's the only way that Ireland is going to succeed. And that's what I think the ITLG should be very good at. We have the experience in the members to bring that capability back to Ireland and to show what can be done.
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Interviewer9:37
And do you think in this time of despair internationally, globally, economically, that that message is resonating, getting through here?
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Craig Barrett9:44
Well, you know, there are two things here. One is the banking crisis, the real estate crisis has been a cold bucket of water thrown on everybody, and to some degree that's what everybody thinks about. But I don't think that's the big challenge. Ireland will recover from that. The U.S. will recover, the UK will recover. The real issue is: after you get over this short-term financial crisis, what do you do next? If Ireland just says, 'Well, we survived that crisis and now we're okay,' I think that's a real problem. Ireland has to start looking forward for the next 10 or 20 years and say, 'What are we going to do next? We had all this foreign direct investment that built our economy up in the last 20 years, but frankly, that's probably not going to continue. There are too many other places for multinationals to put their money. We have to do something new and different.' I hope that's what the Irish government, the politicians, and the people are thinking about. If they get fixated on the short-term financial crisis, they're doing the wrong thing. Throw money at it, buy the toxic assets out of your banks, get through that, but then worry about the long term. And that's what we're talking about: entrepreneurship, beefing up the education system, beefing up the investment in research, and then taking those smart people and those smart ideas and creating the environment for them to do something wonderful. That's what entrepreneurship is all about.
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Interviewer11:20
That's great. And I'll let you go now to talk to the Irish government about that. We'll try that. So much. That's great. Brilliant.