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US Intel

(stratechery.com)
539 points maguay | 3 comments | 26 Aug 25 10:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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rickdeckard ◴[26 Aug 25 11:31 UTC] No.45025088[source]▶
> "The single most important reason for the U.S. to own part of Intel, however, is the implicit promise that Intel Foundry is not going anywhere."

If the last 8 Months of this year has shown something, it's that every decision the US takes could be considerate, but as likely also completely random and reversed and bent at any moment in the future.

Accepting those risks in order to sell in the US-market (assuming it would be required) requires that the US-market also provides the commercial rewards.

For now I don't see that this is secured in sufficient volume to justify such an investment, considering that it will take YEARS for Intel to actually become a viable foundry and have a customer product ready to be produced there. And I'm not even talking about the potential cost-increase vs. an established high-volume foundry...

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3D30497420 ◴[26 Aug 25 14:00 UTC] No.45026700[source]▶
> every decision the US takes could be considerate, but as likely also completely random and reversed and bent at any moment in the future.

This my main problem with this investment. I can certainly appreciate the benefit of US government investment to ensure "homegrown" production capabilities. However, this depends a lot on a level of understanding, intelligence, and planning from the US federal government which is monumentally lacking. If no one trusts Intel now, I cannot begin to imagine how anyone would view Intel plus the current US government as more trustworthy.

Just look at the current approach to tariffs as a good example for how current "industrial policy" is being carried out. Unpredictable, vengeful, and declared with little plan or forethought. Why should we expect any differently from other policies?

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dpkirchner ◴[26 Aug 25 14:52 UTC] No.45027396[source]▶
Add to this the fact that given the government is now propping up a poor performing company there's no possible reason to try to create a new domestic competitor. If you do and you start becoming successful, the government can just increase their "investment" in your chief competitor and shut you down. It's ludicrous.
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1. 201984 ◴[26 Aug 25 16:06 UTC] No.45028443[source]▶
The point of the article was that there's never going to be a new domestic competitor. It would take hundreds of billions in investment to get off the ground and build a fab from scratch, and they'd be in an even worse position than Intel is currently. No external customer would want to risk using them, and they don't have the internal demand of x86 to keep going on their own.
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2. UncleOxidant ◴[26 Aug 25 19:29 UTC] No.45031124[source]▶
There are other alterntives to the US Gov taking a 10% stake (and it must be noted that this is for money already distributed to Intel via the CHIPS act, so it's tough to say how the gov having a 10% stake is really helping Intel here, there's no new investment involved and Intel needs ca$h). I agree with the article that there's a significant geopolitical risk to the status quo. I think it would've been better for the president & his economic staff to arrange a meeting of US companies that need foundry services and try to get them to a "come to Jesus" moment re the geopolitical risk to their current operations relying so heavily on Taiwan. The government role here shouldn't be to own Intel (or other companies) but to incentivize those large fab customers (Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, etc) to make a significant investment into Intel foundry services. Not sure what those incentives would look like - perhaps tax incentives. There's also the possibility that some kind of 3rd party consortium could be setup to run Intel. This way they're not trying to start from scratch (which would take too long and too much capital), but also allows those other investing companies to have some kind of control at a distance.
3. BlueTemplar ◴[26 Aug 25 22:15 UTC] No.45033022[source]▶
"Never" is a very strong statement... or do you expect the USA or the need for chips to stop existing in a time frame as short as half a century ?