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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

#431

Post by UncleOxidant »

bongodongobob wrote: post #395
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.

Well as much as you don't like it, companies this big failing is terrible for the economy and in this case, national security to a degree. I'm of the thinking that when your company gets to a certain size we'd be well off nationalizing. Apple has more money than some nation states. Something that huge has the potential to affect global politics. There's lots of other reasons too, but this isn't like letting the corne…

> Apple has more money than some nation states.

And Apple needs their chips fabbed, so why not have Apple invest $50B into Intel? Nvidia could afford to chip in too. These companies that face a huge amount of geopolitical risk because they've put all of their eggs in the TSMC basket should have to pay for this not US taxpayers.

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

#432

Post by notepad0x90 »

ecocentrik wrote: post #173
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 agree. He should take control of Tesla, OpenAI, Palantir and Facebook next. Then privatize some of the leading quantum computing companies. Why do we even need venture capital if we can just build out an Office of Strategic Investment and control everything from the federal government. \s

Slippery-slope fallacy. The money to buy shares has to come from somewhere and the power of the purse is with House of reps. Someone like Trump can (and is-per this post) take stakes in random companies, but that's our democracy. You wouldn't say "bomb canada, france, england and norway" because the military bombed one country right? You make sure congress checks and balances that power.

If the government takes over those companies and they don't do well, it means lost jobs which means lost elections too. There's a risk calculus to be had.

The current policy of never intervening or taking ownership in companies.. unless they are "too big to fail and start failing" only benefits the companies.

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

#433

Post by vel0city »

mempko wrote: post #311
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…

On a related story. Tesla was saved by a $500 million bailout loan from the DEO loan office. Part of the agreement was that the US government would take a stake in Tesla UNLESS they pay back the loan ahead of schedule. That's why Tesla paid it back ahead of schedule, Elon didn't want the government to take a stake. But he spun it as a victory for the US tax payer. EDIT: Before downvoting, tell me where I'm wrong.

You're wrong because it wasn't some bailout it was a normal government loan available to to a wide range of companies. I'm not Tesla stan but it's massively misrepresenting the loan to call it a bailout. It's the kind of market investing the government should be doing, underwriting somewhat riskier loans to push the envelope on technology.

https://www.energy.gov/lpo/advanced-technology-vehicles-manu...

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

#434

Post by bongodongobob »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #431
bongodongobob wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well as much as you don't like it, companies this big failing is terrible for the economy and in this case, national security to a degree. I'm of the thinking that when your company gets to a certain size we'd be well off nationalizing. Apple has more money than some nation states. Something that huge has the potential to affect global politics. There's lots of other reasons too, but this isn't like letting the corne…

> Apple has more money than some nation states. And Apple needs their chips fabbed, so why not have Apple invest $50B into Intel? Nvidia could afford to chip in too. These companies that face a huge amount of geopolitical risk because they've put all of their eggs in the TSMC basket should have to pay for this not US taxpayers.

I'd rather the citizens control the companies than the other way around.

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

#435

Post by cuttothechase »

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…

I mostly agree with this but have a hard time digesting the fact that someone would invest going to war with inferior looking strategy and technology.

Future wars are likely going to be GPU driven, ML heavy entities where efficiency matters a lot more than brute force, blunt grenade throwing wars of the past.

A super power like US would likely want to be in the forefront of this if they happen to be in a tussle with a worthy adversary.

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

#436

Post by K0balt »

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.

I’d love this to be true but the tech involved is Sci-fi level stuff. Neutron beams used to chop off atomically perfect slices of giant silicon crystals and wacky stuff like that.

TBF garage fabs -are- a thing but it’s in the hundreds of nanometers scale. Thin film technology is also promising for low tech tape outs, but neither of those is going to be practical for anything better than 1980/90s tech. A modern die would be in the square meters range on those process densities, and could never achieve ghz speeds.

That said, there are a ton of scrappy companies sending out designs to 30-100nm scale fabs, companies with 5-10 employees cranking out cool designs and custom silicon… but they are still sending their tape-outs to giant companies to fab, just on their old, obsolete machines.

Silicon foundries are incredibly capital intensive, and short SOTA process lifespans burn through that investment at a frantic pace.

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

#438

Post by pottertheotter »

I'm all for the government getting stakes in companies that it invests in (see below), but I find it really odd that we already awarded this money to Intel through the CHIPs Act and, instead of disbursing the funds as a grant, they converted it into a stock purchase. I don't like that they're not going along with the law, although that's par for the course.

On getting a stake, I find it odd that the right wing (or at least Trump?) is all for getting stakes in businesses, as that seems so counter-intuitive to what they're about. Personally, I think that if the government is putting billions into strategic industries, taxpayers should get a financial return, not just vague promises of jobs or “competitiveness.”

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

#439

Post by ivewonyoung »

devinplatt wrote: post #344
ivewonyoung wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's interesting example to choose, as I've actually heard often that the Social Security administration is an example of an efficient government administration. For example, a quick Google search shows administrative overhead as around 0.5% of benefits: https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/top-ten-facts-...

Just one instance.

https://fedscoop.com/problem-project-threatens-progress-soci...

> The program, called the Disability Case Processing System, or DCPS, was designed to improve case processing and enhance customer service. But six years and $288 million later the program has “delivered limited functionality and faced schedule delays as well as increasing stakeholder concerns

For the main system they're still using COBOL, which has no Date data type, causing issues even in 2025.

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

#440

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

8note wrote: post #411
scarface_74 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

this is not to say that intel will be manufacturing competitive chips to what TSMC is. are you worried that china will invade taiwan, and then somehow taiwan will still be around to prevent the US fabs from making the best chips? its a bit far fetched

If Intel isn’t manufacturing chips, what US manufacturer comes close? You can’t just build a close to leading edge manufacturing facility in a month
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