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Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

nytimes.com

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Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is US-led, but the US has good reasons. - The US has almost everything it needs in North America to be self-sufficient. Food, energy, natural resources, manufacturing, trade. - The US is tired of being involved in the Middle East. - The US is tired of protecting the oceans and trade for everyone else. - The US is tired of China stealing its tech, being protectionist, becoming an adversary, not being friendly to US…

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> US led NATO expansion lead to the war in Ukraine, and Europeans are paying the price.

This is the Russian propaganda of 2 years ago, and we know it is a lie because Putin went on camera and told us so himself. When asked by Tucker Carlson why he invaded Ukraine he gave a half hour history lecture telling us about its history of Russian occupation. Putin justifies his murderous invasion by pointing to former borders of historical Russian entities -- which by the way would not just include Ukraine but Latvia, Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Germany, Finland, Japan, Mongolia, Romania, and Poland.

Every child in Eastern Europe knows this to be the real case, and only Americans who have no serious understanding of Russian and have generally never even visited believe this hogwash about NATO.

Putin even said in 2002 that Ukrainian NATO membership was a matter between Ukraine and NATO only: "At the end of the day the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners."

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#522

Oh good, another bunch of board members can now afford their yacht club memberships for 2024. These handouts need to stop.

The alternative is to be dependent on the rest of the world for chips. The market decided that the most efficient transaction is to offshore all of this infrastructure to geopolitically-compromised areas and pray that China never does what every other emerging power in the history of geopolitics has done. The market chose wrong.

The actual alternative would be to publicly admit the failure of very loosely regulated free markets and regulate the chip industry instead, but apparently the charade must be kept alive at all costs (to the taxpayers).

> The market chose wrong.

Oh no, the market chose right, but what the "market" wants doesn't align with what the nation requires.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#523
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether we look back in 20 years and think "wow glad we took that hit upfront" is anyone's guess Globalization is breaking down quickly. Chips are crucial to national security and our economy. The supply chain for advanced chips is heavily dependent on East Asia which is a geopolitical powder keg and a demographic time bomb. The only thing more expensive than whatever we end up with is chips unavailable at any pric…

"because East Asia devolves into a war stricken basket case" The past decade of American media has been promoting this new cold war narrative as if there is inevitably going to be a major war with China. If there is war in East Asia then the whole international economic system will collapse, people will be starving in the streets. That's if it's not a nuclear Armageddon and we're left to rubbing two sticks together.…

> The world is so interconnected and everyone depends on everyone so much that there is basically no point in planning for this scenario

There's always a point in planning for a scenario if you think the risk is high enough and there is something you can do to better prepare for it.

In this scenario, the ones most impacted immediately will be the ones most dependent of the global economy. If you can't get the basics like food, water, and shelter if war with China breaks out then sure you'll be in a bad spot. But is it really an impossible task to prepare at all?

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is US-led, but the US has good reasons. - The US has almost everything it needs in North America to be self-sufficient. Food, energy, natural resources, manufacturing, trade. - The US is tired of being involved in the Middle East. - The US is tired of protecting the oceans and trade for everyone else. - The US is tired of China stealing its tech, being protectionist, becoming an adversary, not being friendly to US…

Good reasons that will raise costs for everyone and lead to measurable impacts on the pace of quality of life improvements. A world that moves towards near-shoring out of security concerns is a world that is long-term poorer. That's real medical innovations, improvements in tech, education, climate that will be delayed because of our new cold war. We are already seeing climate impact in the EV car market where we are…

> Good reasons that will raise costs for everyone and lead to measurable impacts on the pace of quality of life improvements

Do we really need to be stuck on a treadmill of always having to make our lives better? People don't know the word "enough," that's a real problem.

There's obvious issues with how current quality of life is distributed, but I'd propose that we don't need to increase QoL with new inventions simply to make sure that we don't ignore those worst off.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalization is breaking down because of actions being led by the US. It is not some inevitable process that we have to pre-empt, rather it is actively precipitated by our actions.

It is US-led, but the US has good reasons. - The US has almost everything it needs in North America to be self-sufficient. Food, energy, natural resources, manufacturing, trade. - The US is tired of being involved in the Middle East. - The US is tired of protecting the oceans and trade for everyone else. - The US is tired of China stealing its tech, being protectionist, becoming an adversary, not being friendly to US…

To anyone outside the US, we don't all agree with these blanket statements.

Personally I am embarrassed that we were ever involved in the middle east, am willing to see our resources spent protecting natural resources if we can afford it, want a stronger NATO and only see that happening by us leaning further in, and think the only thing bipartisan about our two presidential candidates is that there is no way they are our two best candidates for the job.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#526
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether we look back in 20 years and think "wow glad we took that hit upfront" is anyone's guess Globalization is breaking down quickly. Chips are crucial to national security and our economy. The supply chain for advanced chips is heavily dependent on East Asia which is a geopolitical powder keg and a demographic time bomb. The only thing more expensive than whatever we end up with is chips unavailable at any pric…

>> Globalization is breaking down quickly. Food. Fuel. Renewables is shifting one of these, but the other will not go backwards, its that or billions will starve.

The battle is already lost if we can only feed the people Alice today through a global, centralized food industry.

Such a system is doomed to fail eventually, there's no way around it. Not to mention the fact that its just a big shell game with everyone trying to hide the true external costs of industrial agriculture. The larger we build that system the harder it will fall unfortunately, and if there are no local food producers left in business we're all screwed like the Soviets after they realized killing all the people who knew how to farm was a bad idea if you also like to eat.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#527
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't just intel, it was every semi-conductor manufacturer in the valley (hence the inability to find other work). They closed because it was cheaper to build in other countries, or to outsource from contractors who build in other countries (where organized labor doesn't exist). The U.S. lost thousands of high-paying (and tax-paying) labor positions and atrophied the skills that went with them. Intel profited fro…

> Now, the taxpayer has to pay Intel $8.5B to bring back manufacturing capacity to the U.S The tax payer had nothing to do with it. This is yet another example of the government taking our money (or borrowing our future money) and spending it in ways that we never agreed to and had no input on.

> in ways that we never agreed to and had no input on.

You don't vote in local, congressional, and presidential elections?

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#528

Meanwhile, BDS just announced a boycott of Intel > “Ethical responsibility and international law aside, by insisting on investing tens of billions of dollars in Israel, a ‘war zone,’ only miles away from occupied Gaza, Intel is putting its leaders’ fanatic ideological commitment to Israel over financial and fiduciary responsibility. Why else would Intel freeze plans to expand its chipmaking manufacturing in Ohio whil…

lol who cares about that? they can boycott like 95% of US big corporations cause all of them do business in Isreal

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#529
post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine we’d have that skilled workforce if companies paid enough. I’m a former construction contractor who reinvented myself as a software developer. Each time I run into one of my former peers in the construction industry I hear the same complaints from them. “We can’t hire any good help.” Yet they are still paying the same non living wages that they have for 30 years.

Intel pays its employees very well. They also have generous vacation allotments, and paid sabbaticals every 4 years.

For the record I am not an Intel rep lol this is just based on my opinion & expedrience

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add the numbers get bigger and the risks increase, the number of "cheap labor" countries where investments in large tech infrastructure are safe is shrinking every year. Maybe South America? Intel has (had?) a fab in Costa Rica...

South America is very underrated. People still think about the region in 20-30 year old stereotypes, but most countries have gotten much more stable, economics have improved drastically. Workforce is highly educated, different countries share a very similar culture and mostly speak the same language, which means that a lot of things can be scaled much easier. Of course, there's also Portuguese, which is still somewha…

Venezuela's perpetual political/economic fuck-ups (going on 125 years at this point? [0]), Argentina's recurring currency fuck-ups, some really nasty left-wing vs right-wing spats between countries, and a generally weak rule of law / judiciary (in comparison with executive branches) deserve mentioning too.

South America could stand to learn a LOT from ASEAN -- stability = international investment = economic growth = happy people = stability.

In contrast, in South America inveterate bickering about politics dominates and you end up with something like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Supranational_Ameri...

I hope it sorts itself out! And I know Columbia and Brazil are developing some impressive technical industries, especially since they share North America timezones. But it should be honest about the headwinds.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_crisis_(disambigu...

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