U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:05 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #271

eYrKEC2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Risky compared to Intel. Intel manufactures chips _right now_. They have lost their process edge, but if I have to put chips into a drone tomorrow, I'm betting on Intel rather than any bag of scrappy kids. The risk that they _can't_ produce chips is the same risk as that of Hillsboro Oregon getting carpet bombed -- which is of course not 0%.

Note that there are several drone microcontroller manufacturers based in the U.S. right now - ModalAI, ARK Electronics, Rotor Riot, etc. The thing about drones is that they actually don't require much computational power compared to modern consumer computing . It's just math - control systems, calculus, trig, waypoints, etc. All of these were solved problems in the days of the Apollo Guidance computer, and will run c…

You make an excellent point. My uC experience is limited to ESP32 chips (made in china) but that's another example of how much 'old' tech can do when it's cheap, easily available, easy to integrate, and not running bloatware.

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

#422

Post by hajile » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:07 AM UTC

nebula8804 wrote: post #385

fishgoesblub wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect a good reason given the history of this Administration, but a reason in my mind to save Intel is there's only 3 license holders for x86 CPUs. Intel, AMD (American), and VIA (Taiwanese). A dead Intel leaves a single American company that is able to make x86 processors, and a monopoly for actually good x86 CPUs. But somehow I suspect there's no logical reason for this besides lining the pockets of those…

A dead Intel could open the door to have more then three license holders. Isn't Intel the reason there are only three license holders?

The major patents on all the most important parts of x86 expired years ago now. Nobody wants to take on a legacy ISA with tons of footguns everywhere when newer ISAs have learned a lot of lessons from x86 about how to do things better.

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

#423

Post by x2tyfi » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:09 AM UTC

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #371

scarface_74 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because it’s extremely lucrative and strategically valuable to the US

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

#424

Post by hajile » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:09 AM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #81

bigyabai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US can't employ poverty-tier labor to enable competitive margins, though. American businesses and global trade partners already largely reject Intel's foundry services.

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 upcoming generation of weapons is going to use realtime sensor fusion done by AI. Cutting edge chips will matter for those weapons.

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

#425

Post by cuttothechase » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:10 AM UTC

SkyPuncher wrote: post #386

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?

This isn't a generalizable problem. There just aren't many companies that would be in a comparable situation to Intel. Intel is: * Critical to national security * An advanced, industry that's extremely hard to spin up * Essentially, one of two companies in it's industry. Very few other companies meet all of those criteria.

What beats Boeing or Apple then so as to put Intel over the top of these guys?

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

#426

Post by gizajob » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:11 AM UTC

bko wrote: post #418

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the average taxpayer ever actually end up benefitting point blank?

Not that I agree with bail-outs, but 2008 financial crisis that resulted in a number of bail outs actually netted the treasury a profit. > In total, U.S. government economic bailouts related to the 2008 financial crisis had federal outflows (expenditures, loans, and investments) of $633.6 billion and inflows (funds returned to the Treasury as interest, dividends, fees, or stock warrant repurchases) of $754.8 billion,…

I don’t think that really counts if there has to be a giant campaign of quantitive easing by printing dollars alongside.

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

#427

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:14 AM UTC

jimt1234 wrote: post #73

naijaboiler wrote: post #11

i remember when this happened during an actual crisis, in 2008, republicans all over cried on the radio day after day, arguing that it's socialiasm. But now, crickets!!

Exactly! I know there's a lot of Trumpers/MAGAs on HN, so I'm sincerely asking them: How is this not the evil thing you guys constantly lecture us about (socialism!)?

Here's some emergency reading

https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/its-not-hypocrisy-youre-j...

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

#428

Post by Spooky23 » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:18 AM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #340

Spooky23 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, these guys have literally been saying the same crap for 30 years, so it’s a good bet they are full of it.

You’re reading a lot into the US right now. US policy in 2025 is more about which member of the whack pack is the alpha gorilla than anything else.

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

#429

Post by notepad0x90 » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:19 AM UTC

wedn3sday wrote: post #62

notepad0x90 wrote: post #42

I despite/abhor this administration and their politics, but this is a good move. There should be more privatization where national interests are involved. Instead of the ACA for example,the government could have taken a 51% stake in health insurers (forget subsidizing them, own them!) and we the voters would elect politicians to oversee health insurance instead of hoping and trusting CEOs. So many problems are caused…

I swear Im not trying to be glib or dismissive, but I honestly think you dont know what "privatization" means, this is the exact opposite.

No offense taken, my understanding of the term could was wrong. I hope it doesn't take anything away from my argument though. I think I wanted to use the term "deprivatization" instead, I only remember this topic distantly from reading about communism and economics.

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

#430

Post by UncleOxidant » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:21 AM UTC

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…

I think it would've been much better to incentivize the likes of Apple and Nvidia to make investments in Intel. They need to have their designs fabbed, they have a good amount of geopolitical risk. They also have a lot of money on hand. Didn't Apple say they were going to invest $600B into the US? (not that that's really going to happen), ok, so why not put $50B into Intel?