Ironic, Western politicians thought opening up to trade with China would lead to it adopting a Western model of government. Instead it's lead to the USA adopting the Chinese one.
No, I think you're missing the wag-the-dog portion of this event.
U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
161–170 of 765 posts
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#162I give you 3 months before the US government takes 10% of Google, Microsoft, Amazon/AWS, Nvidia, AMD and Apple.
Those companies are not fighting for survival.
Survival is not the issue, it is about control. Today 10% Intel stake (non-voting, bought with already-promised CHIPS funds) puts the state on the cap table, and the 15% skim on Nvidia and AMD China sales swaps export licenses for tribute. The HN usual knee-jerk downvotes on anything about Trump admin criticism, just help normalize it.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#163Capitalism for profits, socialism for losses. I’m sick of seeing this sort of behavior pan out time and time again, though I’m hardly surprised by it at this point.
Speaking of things that wouldn’t surprise me, if Intel can’t manage an about-face in the next three to six years I fully expect them to become a Nationalized enterprise if only to preserve fabrication and chip design capabilities domestically. Same with Boeing given their less-than-stellar track record of late.
The current conflict is over domestic manufacturing capabilities. That’s where it will continue to rage until and unless full-fledged war breaks out. It doesn’t matter how many chips are designed domestically if all production capacity is in Asia within China’s sphere of influence. Intel is a major outlier for chips, as is Boeing for aerospace.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is only 1 winner and 1 loser: Intel. It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US. The argument is national security: the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process. Whether this will happen or not can be debated, but this is what the government expects.
> It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US Global Foundries, Micron, and Texas Instruments all come to mind
GF is a few nodes behind. Micron doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot. TI doesn't have the capacity or knowledge to expand to Intel's size/capacity
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
If someone from the Mafia comes to you and asks for a 10% share of your restaurant you better say yes.
Yes, but in this case the restaurant was already empty of customers on most evenings.
Breaking into an empty locked building is still breaking and entering.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#166Genuine question- How does Govt picking winners and losers going to help? Intel is no Too big to fail Bank. Why save Intel of all chip manufacturers? Wouldnt it be like 25 years too late, with Intel and its heydays !? Would Govt now ensure parity by investing in "marquee" entities across different industrial domains?
The only charitable answer I could give is national security reasons for having domestic chip production, and even that could be accomplished in ways that don’t require the federal government having an ownership stake in Intel. For example, I don’t think the federal government has ownership stakes in Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, despite those companies’ dependence on the military.
There’s a legal precedent that’s no doubt being abused. The Lima tank factory and Watervliet arsenal, for example are owned by the US government.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#167Yet another bailout from the US government as accurately predicted. [0]
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is only 1 winner and 1 loser: Intel. It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US. The argument is national security: the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process. Whether this will happen or not can be debated, but this is what the government expects.
> the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process. Would it though? The TSMC foundries are pretty much in every continent. Are they just going to stop operating if this happens? Because that seems akin to killing a golden goose. Also what is up with Global Foundries? I don’t hear a peep about them.
GF is like a decade behind in research. Without years to ramp up and update their fabs they're not relevant.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is ignoring the original agreement of profit-sharing with the government as was in Biden’s original plan. Feeling “okay” or not “okay” is irrelevant until we know how well Intel does in the next decade and calculate the cost against the profit sharing agreement.
Yeah, I haven’t dug into the numbers to know. Which option makes more money for the government (and therefore the taxpayer, sort of) - a profit sharing agreement, or a share of the company (which, as with all publicly traded companies, is a profit sharing agreement that sometimes happens through dividends, and sometimes happens through stock sales).
Who cares about the money recovery, the actual concern is about getting the production up and running. This doesn’t really address that in any capacity.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#170Ironic that Trump looks to be succeeding in killing both Democracy and Capitalism, which rightly or wrongly are seen as it's greatest strengths.
If they go what does it leave the US with that's any different from any other country?