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Comment by wpwpwpw | Hacker News Reader

What about the CHIPS act and its $52 billion in subsidies and tax benefits? Is Intel just another arm of US government now? And EU will do the same. I believe it's understandable that every political block wants to be independent in such important technologies.

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There is a pretty strong argument that there are a set of companies that the USG considers "too big/important to fail" given the roles they have played in defense and associated industries. Boeing and Lockheed certainly, Microsoft and Intel and Dell most probably.

Without Intel, the CIA and NSA can't do CIA and NSA stuff. I think they're safe.

I can't see them changing their domain controllers and sharepoint out for macs and mediawiki any time soon, any more than I can see them flying A330s.

Dell???

Agree on Intel, MS, Boeing. And there are others.

But how is Dell strategic?

Want your government to buy Lenovo instead of Dell?

Don't they mostly buy HP? For example, I remember see HP trash sitting on the desk in that famous Bin Laden raid photo.

Snowden was working under contract at Dell for the alphabet boys. Dell is not just a HW manufacturer but also a service provider, like IBM.

> CHIPS act and its $52 billion in subsidies and tax benefits?

This is a fair point, and I don't know or will assume but is all of that going to 1 company ?

It should be safe to assume they are pumping money to other companies, such as SMIC and, more recently, Moore Threads. Although they are years behind and, for example, MTT S80 is at 750Ti levels in lots of aspects, it's quite astonishing the advancements they made in such short amount of time.

TSMC spends $36B annually on capital by itself. It’s hard to fathom how massive they have become, few government budgets can keep up with such tech costs.

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