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Comment by lawik | Hacker News Reader

I think Intel wants to stay alive so they are looking for a lifeline and the current administration wants to bring chip production into the US.

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.

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> I think Intel wants to stay alive so they are looking for a lifeline

I'm not sure Intel was asking for this.

It seems like a better approach would've been to broker a deal (he likes deals, right?) where companies like Apple and Nvidia (companies that are currently dependent on TSMC) would've been incentivized to make investments in Intel.

I agree, and I think the government’s incentive might also be a having strategic production capability in the US. Maybe they’re concerned about TSMC’s future with the tension between China and Taiwan?

That's all fine, but this is definitely heading into socialist territory. I guess they're out of ideas and this is how they incentivize. The free markets have failed?

My hypothesis is that this is government response (own stake in Intel) to another government’s action (hint take over of Taiwan) and as such is outside the free market. But I have no evidence to support it, it’s just an opinion and it could be that they view Intel as “too big to fail” or something like that as you suggest.

Well I guess tariffs were supposed to fix all this? What happened to the CHIPS act?

I really wonder how 10% stake in Intel will fix anything practical ?

> the current administration wants to bring chip production into the US

Please don't credit the current administration with wanting to do something beneficial here. Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022 for $52.7 billion is appropriations for semiconductor R&D.

Which Trump essentially killed - part of Intel’s problem as it hasn’t received most of the money it was awarded.

That's why no credit should be given. With the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021, Biden) which allocates 546-715 billion to infrastructure (see: jobs and improvements to daily lives of Americans) and the CHIPS and Science Act (2022, Biden) which allocates 52.7 billion to American semiconductor research and manufacturing we had major sources of government provisions from 2021 to 2024. The Trump admin continuously fails to implement parts of the legislation that they disagree with, and claims all credit for implementing the parts that they agree with.

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