Regardless, it seems like the company leadership should be gutted (the same could be said of Boeing) and the company given over to a new technically-grounded leadership team.
Betting some on Intel is very wise when the alternatives are, as I see it: 1) investing in TSMC building fabs and creating more of an employee knowledge base and skill base on shore, 2) hoping a US-based startup gets enough traction to grow.
Agreed on leadership. But selecting leadership teams, especially technically-grounded leadership teams is extremely difficult. Which is why companies revert to non-technical leadership so often.
Since Intel has been mismanaged for so long I don’t know how many good lower level employees they managed to retain, I doubt much would be left if they properly cleaned house.
TSMC is making fabs in the US, but they are not SOTA fabs. Those are kept in Taiwan.
Building a fab is no mean feat and loss of infra is a major blow, but it's certainly not impossible to build these fabs in the West, just not economical. You are not starting from scratch.
That being said the government will likely not allow them to fail completely out of the foundry business for geopolitical reasons
There wasn't any bailout on them, what do you mean?
google://Intel chips act billions
Intel was looking bad but not the dire state they’re in now.
>The CHIPS Act primarily benefits semiconductor manufacturers and related industries by providing substantial funding for domestic chip production and research. Companies like Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and Micron have received significant grants and loans to expand or establish new manufacturing facilities in the United States.
>The act authorizes roughly $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States, for which it appropriates $52.7 billion
>The act includes $39 billion in subsidies for chip manufacturing on U.S. soil along with 25% investment tax credits for costs of manufacturing equipment, and $13 billion for semiconductor research and workforce training, with the dual aim of strengthening American supply chain resilience and countering China
That is the political calculation, not "throw good money after bad" kind of economics 101.
But I guess "too much socialism"
The problem is that they are far too incompetent and have zero clue about tech, and only understand real estate, that simplest of business that can be executed with mere lizard-brain intelligence.
Tech is also about small startups disrupting large giants, which is completely antithetical to current Republican leadership ideals, where the wealthiest get all gains, regardless of who does the work.
It will take many years of full-on Democratic leadership to reconfigure the Republican Party back to a somewhat innovation-friendly business party. Meanwhile the Democrats, under Biden, were by far some of the most business-friendly politicians we have seen in perhaps a century, spurring massive investment in factories and industry, mostly across red states. But because it's a politically incorrect fact, it never gets reported.
This neat little dichotomy between "free market capitalism" and "centrally planned socialism" is a cute story but also complete fiction. In "capitalist" countries the government basically always runs R&D during any period of time when the stakes are high, and in "communist" countries there are always markets, and they are always sanctioned to some degree.
All of the foundational progress for American leadership in high technology was centrally planned and administered, all of it one way or another: through ATT, through NASA, through the DoD, through the universities. Value creation occurs under the watchful eye of the DoD.
Once in a while we go on an orgy of extractive wealth transfer like now, instead of creative innovation like usually, and the top industry guys always fuck it up. And on cue, yeah this is going great.