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U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

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Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#321

Genuine 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?

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.

And the current administration is unlikely to help Taiwan in the event of said invasion.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#322
post #199

In general I would rather the government take a stake in corporations they're bailing out. I think the "too big to fail" bailouts in the past should have come with more of a cost for the business, so on one hand I'm glad this is finally happening. On the other hand, I wish it were a more formalized process rather than this politicized "our president made a deal to save america!" / "Intel is back and the government is…

What bothers me is the double standard. When the public asks for fully publicly-owned railways, universal healthcare, or any basic social safety assurances—“socialism”. When a megacorporation struggles, immediately to the rescue.

One big difference is management control. People feel that government administered services tend to have poor management and citizen services more often than not. One big example is the DMV since almost every has experience dealing with it, long queue times are almost universal because no one gives a crap and it's very hard to fire a government employee. Or the passport issuance, or applying for permits. Or unemployment benefits, the list goes on and on.

Imagine if the DMV and passport services had even the possibility of competition like a private company has. You bet all of a sudden the service would get much faster and better and with fewer mistakes and red tape with the same or fewer number of employees. Or someone would set up a competitor and imagine how many people would even pay extra just to not waste several hours of their time.

It's tax payer money so there is a lot more waste than even at big private companies. For example, the costs to just administer and operate the social security administration(not including any money paid out to recipients) is $15 billion dollars with a big B. There is no incentive for anyone to save the tax payer any money and there would be a huge pushback from govt contractors, unions and employeees. See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies.

Any large IT project in the government in almost any country and at any goverment costs huge amounts while not returning much value if any. Look at the state and costs of local metro stations and trains in almost any city.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#324
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot Um. All that stuff is still semiconductors, just with different patterns printed on them.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#325
post #304
post #199

In general I would rather the government take a stake in corporations they're bailing out. I think the "too big to fail" bailouts in the past should have come with more of a cost for the business, so on one hand I'm glad this is finally happening. On the other hand, I wish it were a more formalized process rather than this politicized "our president made a deal to save america!" / "Intel is back and the government is…

If a company has truly become too big to fail that it makes sense for the federal government to bail them out, then why are we even leaving the welfare of the company up to private industry in the first place? It's just asking for ways to siphon taxpayer money out of the government through their willingness to buy shares. It inflates the stock price because it shows that the government might buy more share in the fut…

Intel is public and their financials have indicated this would happen. Even at my most irrationally exuberant their stock buybacks didn’t make much sense.

I’m not sure what “more transparency would look like to you, but publicly traded companies with audited financials are quite transparent. As for the part about siphoning money, history has shown that taxpayers do well. In 2008, the US government took roughly 80% of AIG, sold off their stock by 2012, made a roughly $15 billion profit and AIG is no longer considered too big to fail. It worked and did what it was intended to do. There are reasons to be positive about this.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chip manufacturing is too important for the US. We can’t be completely dependent on Taiwan. Nothing against Taiwan, it’s one attack away from being obliterated by China. No company is going to come out of someone’s garage and build a chip fab.

We can definitely offer subsidies for manufacturing in the US - we've already gotten TSMC to open several fabs.

And it’s still owned by a foreign country and Taiwan is restricting TSMC from manufacturing their most advanced processors from being manufactured in the US.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ta...

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothers me is the double standard. When the public asks for fully publicly-owned railways, universal healthcare, or any basic social safety assurances—“socialism”. When a megacorporation struggles, immediately to the rescue.

Bailouts aren't following some rules of fairness, they're for specific reasons like preventing greater economic problems (2008) or national security (probably Intel). You might disagree that those are the best ways to address those risks but that's why we elect the government to make those decisions and act on them instead of letting the country collapse - which is arguably more important than social services which w…

Is like the country is not already collapsing due to lack of social services compared to the supposed enemy which already has higher lifespan while having 10x lower gdp per capita.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#328
post #70

> the government made an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock, purchasing 433.3 million shares at a price of $20.47 per share, giving it a 10% stake in the company > The United States paid nothing for these Shares, and the Shares are now valued at approximately $11 Billion Dollars I don't understand. Can somebody explain to me how the government made an investement, bought shares, but paid nothing?

The answer is in the paragraph in between the two you quoted from. The money for the purchase has already been appropriated by Congress and awarded to Intel. The awards didn't previously have this giant string attached where Intel gives stock in return. But now they do. And it makes sense that Intel is spinning it as a generous investment from the gov't, but the gov't is spinning it as a free gift from Intel. Neither…

> Can somebody explain to me how the government made an investement, bought shares, but paid nothing?

Extortion.

Recent Supreme Court decisions have permitted the government to unilaterally cancel disbursements, even in flagrant violation of the plain text of law, impervious to preliminary injunctions, and then put up procedural hurdles to significantly increase the cost of reaching a final judgment in favor of the plaintiff. See, e.g., the most recent decisions issued this week in National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Assn.: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/relatingtoorders/24

So presumably the administration's deal was, give us what we ask for and you'll get the money Congress awarded, or don't and wait 1-2 years for any case to wind its way through the courts.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#329
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global Foundries is on 12nm. TSMC is at 3.

TSMC gets their machines from ASML who licenses their technology from the Department of Energy. The US will be OK.

If (or when) China invades Taiwan we will be better off than Taiwan but I wouldn't call us "OK" at that point. That will be a major disruption.

It will take decades for the US to get where Taiwan is now in semiconductor manufacturing, if ever. It's not just about building the most advanced chip factory. It's about re-aligning the entire nation's value system and culture to allow such development to happen in the first place.

We complain about the money we spend already. And now we're supposed to subsidize an entire industry to the point where we can build the most complex machines known to civilization at scale in a time-frame that matters to a global conflict that's potentially approaching soon? I don't see it.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#330
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re going to give taxpayer money to a for-profit company, taxpayers should receive a share of the company in return. I generally don’t like 90% of the policies we’ve got going on right now, but I actually feel okay about this one.

Doesn't this create an incentive for the US Gov't to boost Intel and harm their competitors? That seems not great to me from a competition & healthy markets standpoint.

What competitors?
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