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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

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government support should have come in the form of a real competitor. Intel got this way because they had no competition - nobody thought a domestic EULV manufacturer would be an American prerogative in 20 years. All the customers for dense silicon were fine importing it from Taiwan. Pouring more money into a proven dumpster fire won't put out the fire. This is the protectionist just-desert of refusing to regulat…

What’s your suggested remedy?

Deregulate RISC-V, threaten Intel with loss of IP if they can't profit on fabs, threaten to cut Softbank off of American companies if Masayoshi Son won't onshore RISC manufacturing.

There's soft-power coercion left on the table, the only thing we buy with Intel stock is a C-suite's dinner bill.

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

#552

The French government owns stakes in big corporations. And why not, why wouldn't the public own some stake and government (us, in theory) have some control? Airbus being an example. Is it because Trump did it? If Biden had done it, the comments from the right would sound like the sarcasm in this message thread. Trump's temporary, he's not taking his stake home when his term expires.

The issue isn't the US taking a stake in Intel. The issue is Trump running a protection racket where he threatens to use the entire force of the federal government against a corporation or institution unless they pay some very large amount of money. This is the same tactic he's using with universities and law firms.

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

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government support should have come in the form of a real competitor. Intel got this way because they had no competition - nobody thought a domestic EULV manufacturer would be an American prerogative in 20 years. All the customers for dense silicon were fine importing it from Taiwan. Pouring more money into a proven dumpster fire won't put out the fire. This is the protectionist just-desert of refusing to regulat…

So tell me your plan that would create a competitor for Intel from scratch that could be making decent chips in 5 years? 10 years?

Given the circumstances and the relatively low dollars involved, it would be interesting to see the experiment: $10B darpa program to establish a scalable fab ecosystem in 5 years via consortium.

This was how the internet was created, darpa stitched together dozens of performers to get the key ingredients (eg bbn gateways, academic subnets, experimental applications, protocol research.

They even led the last ditch marketing Hail Mary after years of no-one caring about the program besides the zillions of engineers from all around building it by organizing a press day in a hotel ballroom for a demo day.

As a taxpayer I’d strongly support 5B/.1% of the fed budget for a few years just to learn what happens in the attempt.

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

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot Um. All that stuff is still semiconductors, just with different patterns printed on them.

You're right but also wrong. Flash is just semiconductors etched in a different pattern than logic, but you don't print on semiconductors. Semiconductors are 'printed' on wafers via photolithography.

The linked ppt here has a lot of details: https://fabweb.ece.illinois.edu/

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

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One big difference is management control. People feel that government administered services tend to have poor management and citizen services more often than not. One big example is the DMV since almost every has experience dealing with it, long queue times are almost universal because no one gives a crap and it's very hard to fire a government employee. Or the passport issuance, or applying for permits. Or unemploym…

In my entire life, I spent much less time in DMV offices than on the line calling AT&T's customer support. USPS has also been great overall.

I switched away from AT&T. You even keep your number. Switching govt services not an option unless you take more extreme measures.

> USPS has also been great overall

USPS is an independent agency which is funded by its own fees charged to users, not taxpayer money. It's not like the other agencies.

From Wiki:

> The USPS is often mistaken for a state-owned enterprise or government-owned corporation (e.g., Amtrak) because it operates much like a business

It's also far from a monopoly unlike most other govt agencies and has competition in the form of UPS, Fedex, DHL, Amazon etc.

So it's not surprising that it runs better, if it loses user fees, it directly affects the bottomline and thus would have to downsize, no blank check from the taxpayer like other agencies have.

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

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chip manufacturing is too important for the US. We can’t be completely dependent on Taiwan. Nothing against Taiwan, it’s one attack away from being obliterated by China. No company is going to come out of someone’s garage and build a chip fab.

We can definitely offer subsidies for manufacturing in the US - we've already gotten TSMC to open several fabs.

> We can definitely offer subsidies for manufacturing in the US

The very subsidies Intel now has to pay with shares for? How is that a subsidy? Companies now and in the future would be very concerned before taking any US subsidies because the terms can always change after the fact.

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

#558

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…

> 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. What do you think about Senator Bernie Sanders backing Trump plan for government stake in Intel? https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/8/20/us-senator-berni...

I'm glad Sanders never made it past senator. If only Trump never made it past casino owner.

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

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the government need to "demand" to buy a piece of a publicly-traded company? Is 10% of Intel more than what is being traded in the public market?

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

"purchasing 433.3 million shares at a price of $20.47 per share" in the article. That was the price a day or so ago
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