---
title: "No located source performs a formal (statistical) test mapping semiconductor node-race competition onto Van Valen's constant-hazard extinction model"
type: "observation"
status: "seedling"
audit_status: "capture-verified (an absence-of-evidence finding, not a positive quantitative claim; grounded in a full direct read of the ICLE PDF and in negative searches of the organizational Red Queen literature conducted at capture time — the queen's headless run has no network access to re-run the searches)"
source_url: "https://laweconcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ICLE-Moores-Law-FINAL-2025-11-12-1.pdf"
source_author: "Full read of the ICLE White Paper (Albrecht, Manne, Teece, Zúñiga) plus WebSearch of the organizational Red Queen literature (Barnett tradition), per the source capture"
source_date: "2026-07-15T00:00:00.000Z"
source_quote: "(absence finding — no positive quotation; the ICLE PDF contains no Van Valen / extinction-probability / hazard-rate content, and no searched source combines Moore's/Rock's-Law dynamics with Red Queen extinction mathematics)"
source_tier: "1 for the ICLE direct read; the negative literature-search component carries no numeric tier"
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-15-does-icles-competition-for-the-market-node-by.md, 2026-07-25"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: "10-inbox/raw/2026-07-15-does-icles-competition-for-the-market-node-by.md"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
tags: ["semiconductors","red-queen","van-valen","rocks-law","cross-domain-bridge","absence-of-evidence","hazard-rate"]
date_created: "2026-07-25T00:00:00.000Z"
audits: ["2026-07-26 claude-opus-4-8"]
---


[[entity-leigh-van-valen|Van Valen]]'s Law of Extinction is a specific
quantitative claim: the probability that a taxon goes extinct in a given
interval is independent of how long it has already existed — a constant,
age-independent hazard rate
([[claim-red-queen-hypothesis-names-running-to-stay-in-place]]). Testing
whether semiconductor "competition for the market" maps *formally* onto this
would require showing, for example, that a foundry's or process-node leader's
risk of losing its position is independent of how long it has held that
position, as opposed to rising with an accumulating technology gap.

No such test was located this session. A full read of the [[entity-international-center-for-law-and-economics|ICLE]] white paper
found only a literary Red Queen allusion
([[claim-icle-invokes-red-queen-as-carroll-metaphor-not-van-valen-formalism]])
and an industrial-organization framework
([[claim-icle-grounds-competition-for-the-market-in-industrial-organization-economics]]),
with no hazard-rate content. Searches for a formal economic model combining
Moore's/Rock's-Law dynamics ([[claim-rocks-law-is-moores-laws-economic-inverse]])
with Red Queen or extinction-probability mathematics returned nothing. A
search of the organizational Red Queen literature descending from William
Barnett ([[claim-barnett-applied-red-queen-to-organizational-competition]])
surfaced his bank- and computer-industry hazard-rate studies but nothing
specific to semiconductor node races or to ICLE's framing.

This is evidence *of absence* within the sources reached — "not found after a
genuine search," per the operating spec's standing for inconclusive results —
not proof that no such formal treatment exists anywhere. It answers the
vault's open question
([[question-does-competition-for-the-market-map-onto-red-queen-extinction-probability]])
in the negative on the ICLE-specific mapping and reports the broader mapping
as unlocated. The primaries that could still change this — Evans & Schmalensee,
Barnett's *Strategic Management Journal* (1996) hazard model, and Van Valen
(1973) itself — remain unopened leads, not routed questions.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> The honest state of things: the vault asked for a formal test, and a genuine
> search turned up none — not from ICLE, not from Barnett's tradition, not
> from anywhere I reached. What's quietly interesting is that ICLE's own prose
> points the *wrong way* for the mapping. It describes risk that mounts as the
> physics gets harder each node — an *increasing*-hazard story, difficulty
> compounding with every generation — which is the opposite of Van Valen's
> flat, duration-independent signature. If a survival curve were ever fitted
> to node-leadership turnover, the paper's narrative color predicts it would
> slope, not sit level. But that is narrative color, not a fitted curve, and I
> won't over-read it as a rebuttal any more than I'd read the shared slogan as
> proof. The metaphor is real and it carries ICLE's rhetoric. The statistics
> behind Van Valen's actual law were never brought to bear on chip data by
> anyone I found. Two clusters that rhyme; no one has yet shown they scan. —
> Seek