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    US Intel

    (stratechery.com)
    539 points maguay | 17 comments | | HN request time: 0.614s | source | bottom
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    themgt ◴[] No.45026515[source]
    I’ll be honest: there is a very good chance this won’t work .... At the same time, the China concerns are real, Intel Foundry needs a guarantee of existence to even court customers, and there really is no coming back from an exit. There won’t be a startup to fill Intel’s place. The U.S. will be completely dependent on foreign companies for the most important products on earth, and while everything may seem fine for the next five, ten, or even fifteen years, the seeds of that failure will eventually sprout, just like those 2007 seeds sprouted for Intel over the last couple of years. The only difference is that the repercussions of this failure will be catastrophic not for the U.S.’s leading semiconductor company, but for the U.S. itself.

    Very well argued. It's such a stunning dereliction the US let things get to this point. We were doing the "pivot to Asia" over a decade ago but no one thought to find TSMC on a map and ask whether Intel was driving itself into the dirt? "For want of a nail the kingdom was lost" but in this case the nail is like your entire metallurgical industry outsourced to the territory you plan on fighting over.

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    1. zoeysmithe ◴[] No.45026778[source]
    There's a real folly in capitalist countries thinking they can be self-sufficient walled castles. Capitalism by its nature will seek out the lowest cost be it in labor or manufacturing. That means often means outsourcing.

    Our system has no breaks for this. In fact it works actively for this, hence the neolib ideal of "just move towards efficiencies, and let the chips fall where they may." This is ideal under capitalism. As long as we avoid the needed migration to socialism, this is the best we can do.

    Neolib economies generally work as much as anything "works" under capitalism. The GDP of the USA, median salary, quality of life, etc was the envy of the world until the recent nationalist movement that's based on "insourcing" and tariffs. You can't go back and capitalism migrates to efficiencies, which means outsourcing. Its more efficient to export factories and keep cushy office/service jobs here and drain the profits from those factories overseas.

    Nationalism/protectionism and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible, so here we are. Demagogy and populism and "return to the past" mentalities used to win political power are the actual problem here.

    Also what exactly happens if intel goes under? We have to buy 'foreign' licensed ARM? Manufacture in Asia? We're already doing that. And we have AMD which is a good, if not, superior product, regardless of manufacturing locale. We don't need local fabs the same way we don't need local factories for a lot of other things. You can't just depress wages with a wave of a hand nor do tariffs work outside of some really focused edge cases.

    >The U.S. will be completely dependent on foreign companies

    This is true of nearly all things in nearly all countries. Recent nationalist movements won't change how capitalism works and recent tariffs and protectionism has only hurt these industries and the working class. The toothpaste is out of the tube and it cannot be put back in. What we're seeing with the government buying intel is an attempt to do that, and it will fail. Expect more tomfoolery like this until we get responsible leadership, but until then we all have to sit here and watch these various economic horrors unfold. Be it this, inflation, mindless tariffs, etc. This will fail and its obvious it will, but currently it buys political power, so we will go this route because voters, largely uninformed on how capitalism works, think this is the "one weird trick" that will make them wealthy. It won't. In fact, all recent indicators are more negative as these policies continue. It will instead make them poor.

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    2. micromacrofoot ◴[] No.45026879[source]
    That's the premise of neoliberalism, you need globalism or the entire idea of capitalism falls apart and every domestic company becomes a crab in a bucket... trying to recapture that lost value with nationalism won't work within the span of political term limits, they're trying to undo something that's been happening for 50 years... we literally don't even have the underlying infrastructure for re-shoring, basics like getting electricity where it needs to go become a problem
    replies(1): >>45027207 #
    3. belter ◴[] No.45026945[source]
    To quote Dave Chappelle: "I want to wear Nike shoes...I don't want to make them!"
    replies(1): >>45028585 #
    4. franktankbank ◴[] No.45027053[source]
    Efficiency is in tension with resilience. I think the pursuit of efficiency at the high end results in a less efficient system because of all the second order effects.
    replies(1): >>45027709 #
    5. jack_h ◴[] No.45027204[source]
    > There's a real folly in capitalist countries thinking they can be self-sufficient walled castles. Capitalism by its nature will seek out the lowest cost be it in labor or manufacturing. That means often means outsourcing.

    It can mean outsourcing, but I think your broader point is undercut by the fact that the USD holds a very special place as the world reserve currency. This creates high foreign demand for the USD which pushes up the exchange rate and leads to US exports being less competitive on the international market (i.e. our manufacturing base gets hollowed out because it cannot compete). This is a large market distortion that the US actively defends because it benefits us in other ways. Tariffs and general protectionism is not a good thing in a free market, but that's not really what is happening at the international level.

    6. jkestner ◴[] No.45027207[source]
    That would explain why the nationalist is strongly looking at unlimiting his term, except any plan for re-shoring is stuck in the 80s with him.
    7. NitpickLawyer ◴[] No.45027405[source]
    > Nationalism/protectionism and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible

    Huh? France and Germany are prime counter examples of your statement.

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    8. bix6 ◴[] No.45027709[source]
    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?
    replies(1): >>45027896 #
    9. vonneumannstan ◴[] No.45027751[source]
    >Also what exactly happens if intel goes under? We have to buy 'foreign' licensed ARM? Manufacture in Asia? We're already doing that. And we have AMD which is a good, if not, superior product, regardless of manufacturing locale. We don't need local fabs the same way we don't need local factories for a lot of other things. You can't just depress wages with a wave of a hand nor do tariffs work outside of some really focused edge cases.

    This is the same short sighted nonsense that got us into this mess. What happens if China invades Taiwan tomorrow? They can cut off the supply of chips to most of the world and global economies will collapse overnight. You really haven't thought through the implications of having critical dependence on a single small island that a global power is incredibly invested in controlling.

    replies(1): >>45030005 #
    10. schmidtleonard ◴[] No.45027896{3}[source]
    The people who own all the capital do and that's part of the problem. Nobody likes seeing red in their brokerage account.
    replies(1): >>45028009 #
    11. bix6 ◴[] No.45028009{4}[source]
    O sure there’s no long term forethought and if you manage others’ money you’ll get fired. It’s brutal.
    12. _DeadFred_ ◴[] No.45028585[source]
    'and I'm happy to make money off the jokes about/normalize the little girl that has to work in a sweet shop in a tropical climate doing it for basically nothing'.

    Current American culture can be pretty ugly.

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    13. zoeysmithe ◴[] No.45029578[source]
    They both have strong labor unions and/or collective bargaining agreements the USA does not have. That is to say socialist-coded policy is what is helping here, not capitalist ones.

    Their benefits are almost purely from the strength of the working class, hence workers having it better there.

    In France, the percentage of employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement, which is very high (around 95-98%)

    In Germany, about 50% of workers are directly covered by collective bargaining agreements (CBAs)

    In 2024, the union membership rate in the United States was 9.9%, representing 14.3 million workers, while 16.0 million workers were represented by a union under a collective agreement, accounting for 11.1% of the workforce.

    ---

    If American workers want a better life they need CBA's and unions, not protectionist tariffs and buying chunks of random tech companies.

    14. twoodfin ◴[] No.45030005[source]
    What happens if there’s a global pandemic next month and every industry experiences massive labor and supply chain disruption?

    It sucks for a while; the system is strong and adapts.

    I appreciate fabs are multi-year, massive capital investments, but TSMC already has one up and running in Arizona. There are others (including owned by Intel) all around the world. They won’t go poof when INTC is no more.

    15. rangestransform ◴[] No.45031969{3}[source]
    Unless you believe that rich countries should altruistically give resources to poor countries, this is the best we can do. If there were no cost advantages to manufacturing in poor countries, they would have been entirely left out of the global economic sphere and unable to trade anything for industrial machines and technology.
    16. tick_tock_tick ◴[] No.45033255[source]
    I mean they are both shocking poor compared to the USA and France is still suffering from ridiculous youth unemployment.
    17. SlowTao ◴[] No.45034252[source]
    This is why I swing like a pendulum between "a better world is possible" and "let the system burn itself out.".