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US Intel

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Re: US Intel

#111
The book "Apple in China" by Patrick McGee focuses on this point in early 2000 top 5 contract manufacturers were in north america. By around 2010 the top one was foxconn which was larger than the next 4 combined. This is going to play out everywhere and result in extreme circumstances.

I think the issue is not just that that its capitalism causing wage issues, its the fact that people think they can control the painless socioeconomic transition that comes with incomes increasing with matching productivity gains, or worst halt and try and reverse it. One or more things will eventually cause a pop/crash/revolution:

- Endless high returns on capital: Wealth accumumlation for - Large debt countries moment of reckoning: At some point a black swan event leading to higher inflation with no leg room for more borrowing like 2008. Bond markets will dictate fiscal tightening and politicians will likely take control of monetary and fiscal policy ending capitalistic bedrocks for them. This will feed into the Endless high return on capital cycle. Government will bow out of every service to service the debt through taxes.

- People not seeing any upward progress in their economic status or careers: Large populations find high upfront cost/headwind to enter into new economies. Failure to adapt, political choices become extreme.

- Deflationary effects due to progress of china, korea, japan etc due to cost of innovation crashing: At some point large economies become advanced enough that cost of highly specialized goods exported by private companies in highly indebted countries will fall causing non dollar currencies to experience deflation and undermine reserve currencies.

The only countries with leverage left would be the ones the ones with technology that is highly integrated into the society at a level that its people can rapidly change behaviors and adapt without losing wealth/landing on the street. After all you can convince a person he wasn't cheated by God/Demagogue, but you cannot convince them that they are not hungry.

Some of this is already happening in fits-and-jerks motion relative to pace of progress since industrialization. Add things like climate change to the mix and you might not be able to ask "how fast?".

Re: US Intel

#112
post #103

Is this the beginning of the US sovereign fund?

Don't most sovereign wealth funds invest mainly (or entirely like in Norway's case) into foreign assets. Holding significant stakes in domestic companies just seems like light state capitalism.

I'd suspect Trump would model his on Saudi Arabia's PIF rather than Norway's fund. The PIF invests in companies worldwide, including Uber and Blackstone, as well as providing capital for mega-projects like NEOM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Investment_Fund#List_of...

Re: US Intel

#113
post #77
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This and everything else. We outsourced manufacturing of almost everything then are surprised when the people doing it for decades are better than we were.

We outsourced manufacturing because it's not very profitable. The Mag 7 make 50x as much money as TSMC. Apple and Microsoft are the most profitable businesses in history.

The problem is when importance is not reflected in the quarterly profit margin.

Re: US Intel

#114
I’m confused. Why is equity required when the current loan guarantees were perfectly adequate? The only answer is that the USG wanted more control and leverage than was required to achieve national security objectives. Kinda negates the whole approach to the article in my opinion.

Re: US Intel

#115
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well on desktop and server they pretty much had no competition until the late 2010s or so. So they were the best by default.

And it took a long time for mobile CPUs to be considered important. Arguably mobile CPUs still aren't considered more important than desktop, even though they obviously sell more.

Mobile CPUs are almost a commodity these days and fairly low margin especially compared to server chips. Most people really don't care what chip does their phone has and its almost always "good enough" relative to the price.

IMO that's much less of a case for laptop and desktop (let alone server). Even if people don't understand the technical details e.g. Apple's superior performance per watt (or its implications at least) is something a lot more people notice.

Re: US Intel

#117
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I think the US government should take equity interests in companies they bail out rather than just giving them gifts or even loans. The US government never gave bailout and gifts to Intel. The original agreement was profit-sharing with Intel through the CHIPS act is standard with any business wanting the funds. All Trump did specifically for Intel was alter the deal to be an equity stake instead, which will stil…

This is a bailout to Intel. It's essentially the US government pfoviding guarantees to Intel and its customers. How would you describe that as anything but a bailout? But really I was talking generally, such as the bank bailouts in 2008. When a bank normally fails the FDIC comes in and takes control of it including ownership. The shareholders are SOL. In my mind, this is exactly what should've happened to all the ban…

Bailouts are different from the CHIPS act you’ll just have to accept that those other bailout agreements didn’t have a profit-sharing clause attached.

Emotionally you call it a bailout but it is not and by trying to enforce that fact you are ignoring the truth and pressing a lie.

Plain and simple the CHIPS Act is not a bailout. [0]

[0] “Biden to require chips companies winning subsidies to share excess profits” >> https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-require-companies-winn...

> Recipients who receive more than $150 million in direct funding "will be required to share with the U.S. government a portion of any cash flows or returns that exceed the applicant’s projections by an agreed-upon threshold," the department said.

> Companies winning funding are also prohibited from using chips funds for dividends or stock buybacks, and must provide details of any plans to buy back their own shares over five years. The department will consider an "applicant’s commitments to refrain from stock buybacks."

Re: US Intel

#118
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We outsourced manufacturing because it's not very profitable. The Mag 7 make 50x as much money as TSMC. Apple and Microsoft are the most profitable businesses in history.

Intel was very profitable until it was not. They spent over $800B on stock buybacks. That will buy you some fabs, some R&D. Its true they invested in R&D but not well. Maybe the answer was to fund an independent internal competitor to keep the org focused. Financialization is a dead end when you face a nation state determined to control steps in you value chain. How profitable will apple be if they can’t get chips?

I still think Intel missed the boat when they had the dominant process in focusing entirely on their own chips and not taking customers for third party fabbing. Samsung and especially TSMC have demonstrated conclusively that the real money is in producing chips for other companies. It might be lower margin, but the volume is undeniable and it keeps your company on its toes with node improvements.

Intel switched to a "service the stockholders before the customers" mode and they have never recovered.

Re: US Intel

#119
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that framing. I also think it’s a disservice to only think in terms of capital efficiency since who really cares how efficient your capital is if you can’t produce food when there’s a shock?

The people who own all the capital do and that's part of the problem. Nobody likes seeing red in their brokerage account.

O sure there’s no long term forethought and if you manage others’ money you’ll get fired. It’s brutal.

Re: US Intel

#120
> President Donald Trump’s announcement on Friday that the U.S. government will take a 10 percent stake in long-struggling Intel marks a dangerous turn in American industrial policy. Decades of market-oriented principles have been abandoned in favor of unprecedented government ownership of private enterprise.

Really? A decade and a half ago the US government owned a 60.8% of GM and none less than Barack Obama was directing management changes.

The US has a long and well established history of being a mixed-market economy to varying degrees.

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