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U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

(www.cnbc.com)
607 points givemeethekeys | 4 comments | 22 Aug 25 21:01 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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jjcm ◴[22 Aug 25 22:36 UTC] No.44990743[source]▶
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 investing BUY INTEL SHARES" media event. These things should follow a strict set of rules and processes so investors and companies know what to expect. These kind of deals should be boring, not a media event.

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ch4s3 ◴[22 Aug 25 23:08 UTC] No.44991032[source]▶
I’d really rather we didn’t bail out these companies at all. It clearly creates moral hazard and makes it hard for better run companies to enter markets.
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JustExAWS ◴[22 Aug 25 23:13 UTC] No.44991093[source]▶
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.

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andrewflnr ◴[22 Aug 25 23:40 UTC] No.44991294[source]▶
"Someone's garage" is a straw man. There must be people here who could, with adequate funding, build a smallish but viable chip manufacturing company.
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scarface_74 ◴[22 Aug 25 23:44 UTC] No.44991339[source]▶
There is no such thing as a “smallish” chip manufacturer that can manufacture leading edge chips. It’s about scale.

If it were that easy, Apple, Amazon, Google AMD, Nvidia, etc who all design their own chips would have done it.

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1. alfiedotwtf ◴[22 Aug 25 23:55 UTC] No.44991452[source]▶
Flip side: why would Apple, Amazon, Google, AMD, NVIDIA etc build their own when they can outsource it cheaper?

Companies are run to make a profit… they don’t care about sovereignty as long as the money is coming in.

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2. x2tyfi ◴[23 Aug 25 01:09 UTC] No.44991970[source]▶
Because it’s extremely lucrative and strategically valuable to the US
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3. alfiedotwtf ◴[23 Aug 25 14:01 UTC] No.44996055[source]▶
… but the shareholders are global?! That’s not really a compelling argument unless you made it a requirement that all major/strategic companies must have 100% domestic ownership!

BUT - all you then need to do is create a Delaware LLC that buys the strategic stock, which is owned by $SCARY_FOREIGNERS

4. SJC_Hacker ◴[24 Aug 25 04:45 UTC] No.45001476[source]▶
> Because it’s extremely lucrative

It could be extremely lucrative if they get it right.

Simply trying to copy TSMC would also be a poor strategy.

Companies have "core competencies" (or should). The manufacture (not design) of high-end silicon has never been one for any of these companies except Intel, and they have just lost big time.

> strategically valuable to the US

Yeah, they don't care.