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rickdeckard parent
> "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...

3D30497420
> 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?

dpkirchner
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.
201984
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.
UncleOxidant
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.
BlueTemplar
"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 ?
rickdeckard OP
I frankly look forward to see whether the US will actually CARE how Intel will conduct its business, instead of simply trying to just reap benefits from it.

Everything can for now be put under the umbrella of "US semiconductor sovereignty", but actually making this happen involves much more strategic planning and investment from the government.

For example, I doubt that Intel has sufficient experience as a foundry to support design-finalization for ARM, they are JUST starting NOW with this.

So who will pay for closing such gaps? Would they force e.g. Apple to use Intel as foundry and swallow all the associated cost, or would they rather accept Apple to source from a TSMC fab (which is built in US for the big customers like Apple and nVidia)

tick_tock_tick
> If no one trusts Intel now, I cannot begin to imagine how anyone would view Intel plus the current US government as more trustworthy.

Because people making these decisions aren't chronically online....

acdha
This is relevant how? You can be the most dyed-in-the-wool old school businessman who only reads physical newspapers and the first thing you’d think of is the way all of your suppliers are reporting unpredictability and your buyers are talking about reduced demand. Businesses like predictability and between the chaotic massive tax hikes and aggressively politicizing the federal reserve, they don’t have a stable environment.
slipperydippery
I actually think that if we're going to tax-privilege capital gains to a huge degree over wages, it's entirely appropriate for the government to claim some small chunk of non-voting, least-privileged (both to avoid conflicts of interest and fucking up the regular equities & debt markets) shares of every corporation over some size, probably with some other implementation details in there (graduated percentage as company revenue size grows or whatever, that kind of thing). I also think we should consider going back to things like having some parts of the defense industry outright government-operated, like we used to do, which these days might include a chip foundry or two. Not saying we should definitely do it, but I think it should be seriously considered.

... this ain't that, though. It's a one-off, not a reliable broadly-applicable policy, and it's not clear what kind of strategy it represents in the bigger picture. I also doubt the ownership structure is as hands-off as I'd prefer, though I admit I've not looked into the details (if there even are details yet—we've had a lot of reporting on things as if they've happened, that then sometimes go on to never actually happen, lately)

[EDIT] I further think it would be better than the status quo to acknowledge that we have an economy dominated by Zaibatsu now, and to use the government to leverage them for public benefit the way the "Asian Tigers" do/have, though I don't think this is that happening, either. I think we're currently picking the worst of three options, of "intentionally use them to their fullest; break them up; do nothing" (we've been on the "do nothing" track so far, having abandoned "break them up" in the '70s).

klooney
Best case, we get President Vance before 2028 and things settle down.
maxhille
Well given Vance's connection to Peter Thiel I don't think it would be less destructive
klooney
It would be less mercurial, I think, although Vance is such a a political chameleon I don't totally know what he would do if he got his brass ring.
kingkongjaffa
> Vance is such a political chameleon

What makes you say that?

nemomarx
He's reported to have many more liberal friends when he was in college, used to be vocally anti trump, wrote a book criticizing rural Americans and their culture before running on a base of them. That kinda stuff.

At minimum he's made a never Trump - maga pivot for political expediency but it also seems like his positions are tied to whatever Peter thiel wants

lantry
I'm not so sure that things would settle down if trump was out of the picture. Trump is obviously an active force, but even if he is gone, the forces that led to his rise will still exist. In other words, even without trump there is a strong anti-elite, anti-expert, nationalist/isolationist movement in the US. Waiting for trump to die or go away is foolish.
xp84
Sure, but the thing is, from appearances Trump seems to lack the ability to think strategically, to plan, and importantly, to find and listen to people who know things.

Even setting aside most of the culture-war stuff, which is so white-hot right now that it clouds matters, I think almost any other politician other than Trump, AOC, MTG, and probably a couple more I'm forgetting, would be more likely to do that last thing.

Trump's main issue is that he gets all excited and makes rash decisions based on the last person he talked to, compounded by the fact that he chooses who to talk to overwhelmingly based on chump change "campaign contributions" (bribes), family nepotism, or just his existing network of sycophants.

I'm saying all this neutrally toward ideology and left/right. Frankly I think life was fine domestically under both G. W. Bush and Obama, because both of them weren't impulsive and easily swayed to erratic decisions.

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