Not that far from having full-out state-owned enterprises the way things are going.
U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
451–460 of 765 posts
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#452Earlier 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…
How is using tax money to prop up uncompetitive companies good for national security? Wouldn't it be better to replace them with competitive companies? It's super hard to be successful when your own government in backing the competition.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#453Genuine 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?
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…
I hope this is not the reason. I think x86 is a deadend technology. ARM's energy superiority makes it a better choice. x86 only still being used due to legacy/backwards compatibility but thats changing. Apple moved completely away from x86. Theres more and more ARM based windows computers being sold. Theres no x86 chips in phones.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#454Earlier 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weaponry systems now use "state of the art" electronic systems, which in the context of defense only means "not decades out of date."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 upcoming generation of weapons is going to use realtime sensor fusion done by AI. Cutting edge chips will matter for those weapons.
The existing systems do this. Look up the F-35. It's what I was referencing. Bleeding edge state of the art chips aren't required though, or even practical -- these systems need a lot of validation before use, and that makes them always a few process generation behind.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#455Earlier 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
> TI doesn't have the capacity or knowledge to expand to Intel's size/capacity I mean, they might if Intel were allowed to fail.
Much more likely that SMIC would, because TI isn't just 15 years behind; it also has the disadvantage of being in the US. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_industry_in_Chin... for a look at what it looks like where conditions are more favorable.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In the executive branch. Congress has more say in setting defense acquisition policy.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#457Earlier 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.
If TSMC diseaper tomorrow, people will still buy computers, with chips made from Korea, or China, who cares. What are apple or Nvidia risking? They have worked hard to lock their customer. The problem is for the US military.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#458Any strings attached? If not, ironically a big chunk of those US tax payer dollars will likely end up in Taiwan/TSMC.
There's an option for the US to buy an additional 5% if Intel sells so it doesn't have majority ownership of its fabs.
But I think the real strings are a soft, private insistence that Intel won't be allowed to sell itself overseas.
The Defense Production Act and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would be used to prevent the sale. The carrot is the whatever $18B in grants and investment, the stick is legislation that allows the government to prevent a sale.
https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/international/the-co...
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#459Earlier 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…
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…
Bleeding edge efficiency doesn't matter as much as you think in those applications. A 20% or 50% energy efficiency matters a lot for datacenters or mobile phones. It matters less in a smart bomb, missile, or tank.
Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
We had that in 2020