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Comment by throwaway4good | Hacker News Reader

What I worry about with Intel is that they have gotten too much into politics; relying on CHIPS act and other subsidies, encouraging sanctions on Chinese competitors while relying on full access to the Chinese market for sales.

It is not a good long term strategy: The winds of politics may change, politicians may set more terms (labour and environment), foreign market access may become politicized too (US politicians will have to sell chips like they sell airplanes on foreign trips).

So Intel will end up like the old US car makers or Boeing - no longer driven by technological innovation but instead by its relationship to Washington.

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"This investment, at a time when … wages war against utter wickedness, a war in which good must defeat evil, is an investment in the right and righteous values that spell progress for humanity"

That is not a partner for creating logical systems. Very clear their current decisions are political.

That bananas quote is from an Israeli minister.

Imagine what it would do if Intel became strongly associated with one side in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It could really hurt their business.

Usually business leaders are smart enough to stay out of politics.

Apparently they have become strongly associated since that quote is part of the release for their new plant. It is sickening to me this kind of hard-right religious zealotry is part of decisions of tech companies. I am avoiding Intel as much as possible now, I hope others will consider this too.

That quote didn't come out of Intel's mouth.

It is directly associated with the deal they are making. Would you let that quote be used with a deal your company is making? Intel knows full well how this is being spun.

They are taking sides. That is easily seen during an interview with the CEO, who almost cried talking about the events of October 7th. Intel will give 5000$ war grant to the Israeli employees. One of Intel's largest fabs is a 20-minute drive from where the massacres occurred.

Do you know if AMD has any presence in Israel? Intel has already sold me multiple garbage dump products in the past and so if I can minimize my Israel related purchases i'd prefer to do that.

The Mac is annoying since I think some pieces of their silicon designs come from Israel (storage controller). Can someone correct me if I am wrong on that?

AMD is big in Israel as well. Most of the tech stuff is developed in Israel, side effects of future-oriented democracy I imagine. Boycotting things is useless virtue signalling of the woke disease. I would suggest going to pro-Palestinian protests and try to explain to them that raping, kidnapping and mutilating children is not going to bring peace and a country to Palestinians.

It's fine to be future oriented, to share development, the problem is any religious destiny/racist element.

I'm not sure what you mean by "woke disease," but consumerism involves evaluation.

Oct 7 was horrible, but it didn't come out of nowhere. Sabra and Shatila, for example (Waltz with Bashir being a very good Israeli film on the topic), and the many thousands of people killed mutilated or displaced in their usual unhelpfully disproportionate response..

How is AMD big in Israel?

> Boycotting things is useless virtue signalling of the woke disease.

I didn't realize HN served multiple alternate realities. Over here where I'm looking from, by far the largest boycotts of the last 8 years have been from conservatives who were upset by events like trans people being featured in ads and the existence of gay people in movies/tv shows.

What company doing VLSI, with more than say 500 employees, doesn't have some kind of presence in Israel? That's got to be a short list.

Basically all the big semiconductor companies do R&D in Israel

Yes, but it's all relative. A giant new development is different than a branch office. Though in all cases there is no doubt overlap with their military industrial complex. But I don't think we will normally see such religious extremism tied to projects, and that should be called out, loudly and clearly, as not ok.

Intel has used political incentives often though its history to great effect. I think its a much smaller issue than you think. Its part of their standard game-plan for over 30 years. The issue with boeing is becoming acontract company that into contracts out all their work which is self defeating and leads to brain drain. EX: the door lacking bolts because Boeing doesnt even build its own fuselages anymore and have let their standards fall, wholly depending on contractors with little oversight.

Boeing was culturally taken over by McDonnell Douglas leadership.

What's fascinating albeit somewhat depressing is that it seems something similar happened when McDonnell merged with/took over Douglas as well: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-legal-and-moral-questi...

Have you read chip war?

It will challenge your concerns

Yeah. Too much the cold war angle. I think he overstates the role of government/military and underestimates how much the consumer market has driven the process innovations that has made computing cheap and ubiquitous,

If you think the concern over China and Taiwan is understated I think you'd do well to look at how both the US and China are putting insane amounts of resources behind this.

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