US Intel

Does the US need a domestic Intel more than domestic ASML (or Zeiss for that matter)?

There's a real folly in capitalist countries thinking they can be self-sufficient walled castles. Capitalism by its nature will seek out the lowest cost be it in labor or manufacturing. That means often means outsourcing.

Our system has no breaks for this. In fact it works actively for this, hence the neolib ideal of "just move towards efficiencies, and let the chips fall where they may." This is ideal under capitalism. As long as we avoid the needed migration to socialism, this is the best we can do.

Neolib economies generally work as much as anything "works" under capitalism. The GDP of the USA, median salary, quality of life, etc was the envy of the world until the recent nationalist movement that's based on "insourcing" and tariffs. You can't go back and capitalism migrates to efficiencies, which means outsourcing. Its more efficient to export factories and keep cushy office/service jobs here and drain the profits from those factories overseas.

Nationalism/protectionism and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible, so here we are. Demagogy and populism and "return to the past" mentalities used to win political power are the actual problem here.

Also what exactly happens if intel goes under? We have to buy 'foreign' licensed ARM? Manufacture in Asia? We're already doing that. And we have AMD which is a good, if not, superior product, regardless of manufacturing locale. We don't need local fabs the same way we don't need local factories for a lot of other things. You can't just depress wages with a wave of a hand nor do tariffs work outside of some really focused edge cases.

>The U.S. will be completely dependent on foreign companies

This is true of nearly all things in nearly all countries. Recent nationalist movements won't change how capitalism works and recent tariffs and protectionism has only hurt these industries and the working class. The toothpaste is out of the tube and it cannot be put back in. What we're seeing with the government buying intel is an attempt to do that, and it will fail. Expect more tomfoolery like this until we get responsible leadership, but until then we all have to sit here and watch these various economic horrors unfold. Be it this, inflation, mindless tariffs, etc. This will fail and its obvious it will, but currently it buys political power, so we will go this route because voters, largely uninformed on how capitalism works, think this is the "one weird trick" that will make them wealthy. It won't. In fact, all recent indicators are more negative as these policies continue. It will instead make them poor.

I mean both sides are guilty. ‘08 saw us bail out banks and now the likes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are GSE’s.

The difference with Intel vs the banks, is Intel has assets that take decade plus to procure (foundries), and not something easily replaceable.

I think the US messed up big time in terms of national defense by not having some Gov program that does semiconductor manufacturing owned 100% from the start by the DoD. Now we need to do some grey area purchase of a failing company.

I think you are putting too much faith in the belief that people actually understand or care about what is behind some of these labels. They are ultimately just a way to create an "us" vs "them" dichotomy.