White House in Talks with Intel for 10% U.S. Government Stake

Many of these moves and strategies make sense when viewed through the lens of organized crime shaking down companies, governments, private organizations, and such.

As to why they still have supporters - I can't really explain that aside from "they're hurting the right people."

Intel's death would be very embarassing to that whole effort. So Intel has incentives (survival) and the administration has incentives (jobs in the US). The method is "whatever can be claimed as a win".

No US party seems particularly capable or keen to hold an ideological line but especially not the GOP from what I've seen. Not saying other countries have particularly impressive parties either. I'm less than thrilled with ours over here.

With that on the line a lot of principles are just plain unimportant.

Hell even Democrats are falling inline behind him on China. D.C. seems to think this is a make or break moment for the long term success of the country.

Okay, there is ideology. But it's a bunch of different people with very different ideologies and goals.

The cognitive dissonance is what blows my mind, this applies to almost every topic.

Borders? Well according to them borders are the most important thing ever, border security etc. Yet Ukraine? Well f** their borders, they're just something Putin can play with and that's totally fine according to them?

The ideology seems to be, "Whatever aligns with my or the great leaders world view, is good and I'll tell whatever stories I have to justify it to myself and others.".

Yes. The party used to be conservative; now it's populist. They are two very different ideological positions. It changed under Trump. It's the same party in name, but a totally different ideology. Many traditional conservatives have gone along with it because the party still slashed taxes, which has been their main goal for a long time. They care much more about lower taxes than government ownership.

I don’t think there’s ideology in politics any longer. And it’s even hard to predict what industries and firms are in favor.

The ideology is whatever Trump says.

Easily. It's called fascism, one of the cornerstones being the marriage of industry and state. It has long been the marching direction of the US power structures, whether the individual participants cop to it or not. It has been an unwritten rule for decades and now it's just becoming more blatant. Republicans are not experiencing whiplash as much as they are becoming self-aware of their actual desires. There is a minority of the republican party that actually values small government (my respect goes out to them), but most of the party's actions to this end have been an obscene minority compared to their constant desire to either regulate morality via government overreach or enshrine their big business butt buddies into monopoly status.

While I feel the democrats are guilty of many of the same things, they are still a faction of what I would call the "capitalist-imperialist party." The GOP has been splitting off into the "fascist-imperialist party" for many years, which is likely one of the reasons for the political divide.

https://time.com/7173651/democratic-party-alignment-history/

The Democrats moved from working class to the professional managerial class and the Republicans in reverse.

The Republican Party circa 2012 no longer exists. The hood ornament looks the same, but the car is completely different.

This was their position just a few months back. This was the reason DOGE existed. At least that's what they said.

But it was never about that. It was always about the fact that they felt that they didn't have control of the government so they didn't want it dictating terms to them. Now that they have control and believe they always will -- now they believe that government should control everything.

> Can someone explain this ideological whiplash?

You've misidentified the ideology. It's "might makes right" not "let's do capitalism".

They literally have no political North Star at this point. It is the whatever Trump says goes for the spineless Republicans and do-nothing Dems.

Before: hands-off economic liberalism.

Now: doing what seems best for ones own nation state.

See “Return of the Strong Gods” by RR Reno for an interesting explanation of lots of puzzling behavior from major political parties.

Because of this, unfortunately, Intel is too big too fail.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_with_Chinese_charact...

This is Too Big To Fail on steroids.

> citizens in general will be able to share in the fruits of the technology, similarly to how Alaskan citizens get payments from petroleum

The alternative approach is right there in your answer. Like in Alaska or Norway, tax the winners and apply the benefits to citizens.

Sadly, we are going the other way both on taxation and benefits. The good news is we can at any time choose to live differently. Some might debate whether we could maintain our competitive business environment if Intel or Nvidia paid a tax rate comparable to yours, but perhaps it's worth a try?

> Money earmarked for semiconductor company under Chips Act could be converted into equity

They’re already getting federal money.

Yes, absolutely, and it's a fairly normal process. How do you think VC investment works? Founders take funding in exchange for diluting their ownership. Further investment rounds dilute all shareholders, including big investors from prior rounds. IPOs often involve issuing new shares, further diluting existing investors. Acquisitions can even result in zeroing out some classes of equity.

Existing investors put up with it because either a) they believe their diluted shares will end up being worth more in the long run, because the new investment is critical to growth or success, or because b) they don't have enough voting power to stop it.

Corporate structure and ownership is just a legal fiction. There's no set number of slices that a company is cut into, and contracts, terms, by-laws, etc. can change that at any time.

Not to say there is never any funny business: with private companies who don't have a market for their stock the 'fair value' is not obvious and you can play games with that number to dilute away the ownership of people who don't have board seats.