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

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

#471

Post by bongodongobob » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:56 AM UTC

freeopinion wrote: post #452

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…

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.

You can't build a new Intel. That would take decades. These aren't startups. They are massive fucking machines that can't just be disassembled and put back together by someone else. So the idea is to control them and get them back on track to better serve the collective interest.

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

#472

Post by softwaredoug » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:58 AM UTC

impossiblefork wrote: post #135

softwaredoug wrote: post #49

I’m pretty sure that’s socialism

Socialism would be worker ownership. This is simply state ownership of what's seen as a strategic business. It's an abandonment of market dogmatism, but not a step towards any of the many ideologies or positions where markets have a smaller role.

So by that logic, state provided healthcare is not socialism. But a labor union providing health insurance is socialism.

Can we get some of that state owned health care :-p

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

#473

Post by phkahler » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:58 AM UTC

Let Intel fail. Other companies will buy state of the art(ish) EUV fabs at a fraction of the normal cost when they're liquidated in bankruptcy. Then we might have several companies on the leading edge.

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

#474

Post by hajile » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:58 AM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #454

hajile wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not talking about the plane. I'm talking about the weapon itself.

Imagine a next-generation fire-and-forget weapons with radar and broad-spectrum camera arrays and an AI trained on a fused version of all this data. Typical defenses like chaff or flares would be rendered almost entirely useless.

This kind of visual approach also renders modern stealth almost completely useless. When an unexpected plane is found on L-band (or some other low-frequency radar), the AD would simply fire a couple of missiles into the area with instructions to visually identify the large objects moving at fast speeds using the fusion of these different sensors (and ground+air-based radars) while in flight.

We are getting pretty close to being able to do this in realtime with cellphone-level chips.

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

#475

Post by shusaku » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:58 AM UTC

reg_dunlop wrote: post #22

Forgive me...how is this different than taxes? And wouldn't it be better to oh, I don't know, enforce the standard corporate tax rate?

I look forward to the people who always claim “taxation is theft” to comment on a single man deciding to strong arm a company into giving 10% to the government.

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

#476

Post by bongodongobob » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 1:59 AM UTC

fach wrote: post #461

bongodongobob wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Branding nationalizing companies as “citizens control” is quite the spin. Chinese citizens surely own the means of production, right?

Nationalizing a company isn't communism and isn't intended to resemble it.

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

#477

Post by hluska » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 2:02 AM UTC

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.

You’re proposing that the United States government force Apple to invest in Intel? Apple chose a different supplier than Intel; at this point it’s hard to consider Intel a competitor to TSMC but let’s pretend they are.

You have proposed a “free market” system in which if you choose the wrong competitor you can be forced to bail out the chosen one. The economics of that don’t work at all.

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

#478

Post by Henchman21 » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 2:06 AM UTC

whoisthemachine wrote: post #373

I have a feeling I'll be waiting a long time for the old "Tea Party" to rise up again and start protesting this.

The only way you're going to get people to notice anything at all is if you shut down the internet.

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

#479

Post by hluska » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 2:07 AM UTC

lugu wrote: post #469

gizajob wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia has a market cap of 4.5 trillion dollars and everyone is committing hundreds of billions to AI CapEx in their direction - they can afford to organise chip fabs if it really came to it. Ok TSMC and ASML would need to be on board but it could be done. Should be done in fact because even a simple SWOT analysis would show the risk to their business.

What is the risk for Nvidia if TSMC diseaper? Wouldn't they simply switch supplier and pick the second best option?

That would not only be incredibly expensive, but there would be a period while quality catches up.

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

#480

Post by softwaredoug » Sat, Aug 23, 2025, 2:09 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…

The “our president made a deal!” part of it makes me skeptical of actual long term patterns past a Trump administration.

While not walked back completely, a lot of what Trump does is minimized and scaled back after the initial theatrical moment. Still in a bad place, but usually some TACO moment happens.

And then, in the end, it’s some executive action that lasts as long as the current president is in power.