Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 765 posts

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

#331

Post by onetimeusename »

miohtama wrote: post #66
cuttothechase wrote: post #18

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.

This is my thought on it too. I don't think this is meant to be a political win so much as US intelligence views chip manufacturing extremely strategically. I also don't know about what will happen to TSMC. But the US has been pushing for US made GPUs as well. This goes back to Biden's admin as well.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/us-govt-pushes-nv...

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

#332

Post by resters »

this is a step away from capitalism and it harms any startups destined to compete with Intel and discourages investment in the startup ecosystem that might compete with Intel, and punishes investors/customers in/of any of Intel's competitors.

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

#333

Post by thayne »

JustExAWS wrote: post #287
ch4s3 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d really rather we didn’t bail out these companies at all. It clearly creates moral hazard and makes it hard for better run companies to enter markets.

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.

So we give a bunch of money to a company with a history of mismanagement and out sourcing chip manufacturing?

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

#335

Post by scarface_74 »

bigyabai wrote: post #24
alephnerd wrote: post #4

Good. It's very much a "Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point" situation. If Taiwan's NDF has ownership share in TSMC and UMC, China's CICIIF in SMIC, Japan's Master Trust in a majority of enterprises, and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala in GlobalFoundries, then we should as well. The recent (50ish years) aversion to Industrial Policy in America has been pigheaded and ideological to a certain extent.…

The government support should have come in the form of a real competitor. Intel got this way because they had no competition - nobody thought a domestic EULV manufacturer would be an American prerogative in 20 years. All the customers for dense silicon were fine importing it from Taiwan. Pouring more money into a proven dumpster fire won't put out the fire. This is the protectionist just-desert of refusing to regulat…

So tell me your plan that would create a competitor for Intel from scratch that could be making decent chips in 5 years? 10 years?

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

#336

Post by llllm »

Nevermark wrote: post #295
llllm wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means Intel is far worse off than publicly acknowledged, and without this it might be worthless.

It doesn't mean that. Sometimes, there are returns on investments beyond what an accountant would calculate, but the investment only costs the same. Making stock priced only for normal returns a buy for beneficiaries of said additional returns. In this case, reducing the risk associated with the imported chip supply.

lol, buy buy buy buy BOOYAH JIM

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

#337

Post by andrewflnr »

JustExAWS wrote: post #287
ch4s3 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d really rather we didn’t bail out these companies at all. It clearly creates moral hazard and makes it hard for better run companies to enter markets.

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.

"Someone's garage" is a straw man. There must be people here who could, with adequate funding, build a smallish but viable chip manufacturing company.

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

#338

Post by anon291 »

jjcm wrote: 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…

The government is not 'bailing' Intel out. Intel's CPU business is profitable. Their manufacturing is not. America gave intel grants to build better manufacturing to secure America's national security interests. Congress did not authorize any acquisition of Intel shares.

All the talk about this from a business / investment side leaves out the simple fact that this is not actually authorized by anyone with the power to actually do such a thing.

Essentially, the government, elected by the public, voted to offer grants to intel, and then intel shareholders woke up today to find their equity had been diluted.

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

#340

Post by adastra22 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #198
adastra22 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter. All of the US's advanced weaponry systems now use "state of the art" electronic systems, which in the context of defense only means "not decades out of date." Two or three generations old is perfectly fine. The military does not need the latest and greatest CPUs and GPUs going into the iPhone 17 or whatever, but it does need the equivalent of the chip in the iPhone 12 or iPhone 8 or whatever for integ…

The China narrative is pure nonsense. You always have guys like Gordon Chang pushing alternating stories about the coming collapse of China, followed by a scary hegemonic whatever.

Regardless of whether you believe the China narrative is true or not (that is to say, whether China will actually do this or not), it is driving US policy.
Post reply on HN