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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

#511
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is only 1 winner and 1 loser: Intel. It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US. The argument is national security: the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process. Whether this will happen or not can be debated, but this is what the government expects.

> It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US Global Foundries, Micron, and Texas Instruments all come to mind

GF is a zombie company. Micron and TI are both far far away from leading edge. There is only one American company which is both developing and manufacturing leading edge nodes.

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

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is only 1 winner and 1 loser: Intel. It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US. The argument is national security: the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process. Whether this will happen or not can be debated, but this is what the government expects.

If the argument was for protecting Intel, then the US government should be placing huge orders with Intel for solutions that will fund R&D and allow the company to regain its position as a foundry. They should be tapping into the defense budget. DARPA should be involved. This was an opportunity for petty extortion and a step towards socialism.

Huge order for... what? DoD's needs for chips are quite modest in quantity. Truth is that the US Gov doesn't need the volume which requires Intel to keep afloat.

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

#513
post #469

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?

Then they'd have to use Samsung or Intel. Both are a bit behind TSMC, but the main issue is that TSMC has a massive amount of capacity so chips would become very, very expensive.

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

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is only 1 winner and 1 loser: Intel. It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US. The argument is national security: the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process. Whether this will happen or not can be debated, but this is what the government expects.

> the US expects China to invade Taiwan and this will kill TSMC in the process. Would it though? The TSMC foundries are pretty much in every continent. Are they just going to stop operating if this happens? Because that seems akin to killing a golden goose. Also what is up with Global Foundries? I don’t hear a peep about them.

Outside of Taiwan TSMC foundries are just pumping out already developed non leading edge fab processes. Everyone who matters to TSMC tech development is in Taiwan.

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

#515

Everyone is talking about "bailouts" and "owning a company that the government funds." This isn't about that at all. This is about the breakdown of the rule of law, a unitary executive bypassing all other branches of government and demanding a private enterprise give itself over to the government. If you don't think there was an "or else" as part of this deal, you're largely mistaken. If you don't think that there wi…

> unitary executive bypassing all other branches of government Is there even a pretence of a law being cited by the White House?

...thats how the US Constitution works. Congress passes laws (CHIPS Act) and the executive branch is empowered to carry them out - in this case the Secretary of Commerce and Commerce Dept. One can argue whether it stretches the intent of the law, nothing wrong with debate. But as of now, I don't think any judge or court has contested in the interpretation of the language.

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

#516
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end, it turns out that people didn't dislike Chinese policies of nationalized industries. They only disliked that the Chinese were doing it. I can't wait for the "I don't think social credit scores are a bad idea. Cancel culture is good actually".

"People" you are referring to want a level playing field. If the Chinese government is tilting the field, there aren't a lot of good options. You can either watch the Chinese subsidize draining most productive capacity from the rest of the world, erect trade barriers (my preference, but it would require cooperation with other countries, which... ain't gonna happen for a while now), or try to tilt back.

If you truly think Chinese subsidies are artificially depressing prices, then just buy Chinese goods to take Chinese’s people’s hard earned money.

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

#517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, the government didn't pay anything for these shares.

Why does this keep coming up? They're paying the rest of the CHIPS Act money. Overall, they're putting in over $10B into Intel.

Where in the bill passed by Congress does it say taking funds entitles the government to 10% of the company 3 years after the fact?

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

#518
post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unitary executive bypassing all other branches of government Is there even a pretence of a law being cited by the White House?

...thats how the US Constitution works. Congress passes laws (CHIPS Act) and the executive branch is empowered to carry them out - in this case the Secretary of Commerce and Commerce Dept. One can argue whether it stretches the intent of the law, nothing wrong with debate. But as of now, I don't think any judge or court has contested in the interpretation of the language.

Which part of the CHIPS act says companies receiving funds have to give the government 10% of the company to continue receiving funds?

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

#519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And BTW, I agree that Social Security overhead is unacceptable. It should be privatized and increased to at least $500 billion to be comparable with health insurance companies. It's not acceptable at all to make private companies look bad.

If it was a company it'd have failed already. > 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 https://fedscoop.com/problem-project-threatens-progress-soci... And that's just…

> Can you imagine raising $288 million from VCs for a software application while delivering so little?

What? You're imagining VCs caring about pizza money? Should I mention, perhaps, the AOL-TimeWarner merger? Or maybe AT&T buying DirecTV for $50B and essentially giving it away for $8B?

Heck, I was a part of an utterly failed project with a $150m budget (in 2005), in a large European company.

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

And? They haven't missed a single payment day in all their existence, moving data between multiple types of media. While working with staff levels that won't even qualify as "skeleton" in plenty of companies.

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

#520
post #518
post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...thats how the US Constitution works. Congress passes laws (CHIPS Act) and the executive branch is empowered to carry them out - in this case the Secretary of Commerce and Commerce Dept. One can argue whether it stretches the intent of the law, nothing wrong with debate. But as of now, I don't think any judge or court has contested in the interpretation of the language.

Which part of the CHIPS act says companies receiving funds have to give the government 10% of the company to continue receiving funds?

Section 9902 of the act authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to provide financial assistance to "covered entities"

One can argue how to interpret "financial assistance" broadly, which is exactly what the administration has done.

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