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

371–380 of 765 posts

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

#371

Post by alfiedotwtf »

scarface_74 wrote: post #350
andrewflnr wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

There is no such thing as a “smallish” chip manufacturer that can manufacture leading edge chips. It’s about scale. If it were that easy, Apple, Amazon, Google AMD, Nvidia, etc who all design their own chips would have done it.

Flip side: why would Apple, Amazon, Google, AMD, NVIDIA etc build their own when they can outsource it cheaper?

Companies are run to make a profit… they don’t care about sovereignty as long as the money is coming in.

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

#372

Post by standardUser »

ivewonyoung wrote: post #322
sergiomattei wrote: post #263

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.

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 unemploym…

> See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies.

I don't think many people believed DOGE was ever intended to improve government efficiency in any real sense.

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

#374

Post by etempleton »

biophysboy wrote: post #319
etempleton wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are the only US company that can produce cutting edge chips now and realistically within the next 15+ years. It doesn’t matter that TSMC produces chips in the US. That is nice for the short term but doesn’t do much for the US in the long term if TSMC falls under China’s influence. Intel is in the midst of a dramatic turnaround and huge shift in strategy. It might fail. But if they succeed it puts Intel and the U…

It mattered for China to have Apple/Foxconn/etc assemble phones in China. By this same logic, won’t TSMC have more tacit knowledge to offer America than Intel, even if their independence is short-lived?

Why would TSMC or Taiwan want to give that information to the United States? There is a strategic reason why TSMC does not build their latest nodes and processes in the United States and why their R&D happens in Taiwan. They want / need The United States to protect Taiwan and their interests. It opens up strategic options for the United States if Intel or another US based company can produce cutting edge chips in the ballpark of TSMC.

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

#375

Post by s1artibartfast »

torginus wrote: post #246
DarkNova6 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda. But I think the current Chinese model is actually much closer to how the USA used to work when there was competition with the USSR. Closer than the US of today compared to the 70s and 80s.

The current Chinese model's basically you have fully publicly traded companies, companies who are either minority or majority owned by a certain provincial government and ones who are either minority or majority owned by the central government (although this is surprisingly rare outside of key areas like telco/banking)

Something like 60% of the top of 100 companies in China are entirely state-owned. Most of the rest are government stake

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

#376

Post by selimthegrim »

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.…

What if the government demands they start paying dividends?

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

#377

Post by tjwebbnorfolk »

andrewflnr wrote: post #337
JustExAWS wrote: post #287

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.

"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.

It is not a straw man.

There is no amount of scrappy cleverness that gets you from zero to manufacturing cutting-edge chips without shitloads of capital investment, years/decades of R&D, a huge manufacturing workforce, and big contracts.

There's no such thing as starting small and scaling in that business.

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

#378

Post by [deleted] »

MyOutfitIsVague wrote: post #180
yieldcrv wrote: post #154

[flagged]

That's needlessly rude. I just found the sequence of events confusing. If I promise you a cash gift, then some months later demand you to give me something in return for the promised gift, it would be silly to say that I paid absolutely nothing. I don't consider that pedantic.

[deleted]

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

#379

Post by thayne »

ivewonyoung wrote: post #322
sergiomattei wrote: post #263

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.

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 unemploym…

Well, my local DMV is much more efficient and friendly than the private health insurance company I have to deal with.

But part of that is lack of competition. I can't really switch to a different insurance company, because the one I am with is heavily subsidized by my employer.

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

#380

Post by colmmacc »

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…

It's not otherwise related to all this but a real bug bear of mine is that municipalities don't get part ownership - along with controlling rights for matters like sales or relocations - of sports teams when we subsidize their stadiums through taxes.
Post reply on HN