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Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

> Apple has more money than some nation states.

And Apple needs their chips fabbed, so why not have Apple invest $50B into Intel? Nvidia could afford to chip in too. These companies that face a huge amount of geopolitical risk because they've put all of their eggs in the TSMC basket should have to pay for this not US taxpayers.

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You’re proposing that the United States government force Apple to invest in Intel? Apple chose a different supplier than Intel; at this point it’s hard to consider Intel a competitor to TSMC but let’s pretend they are.

You have proposed a “free market” system in which if you choose the wrong competitor you can be forced to bail out the chosen one. The economics of that don’t work at all.

The free market is great if there are no discontinuities. However, being a greedy algorithm it's not great about planning ahead for things like geopolitical risk - such as some of the largest, most profitable companies putting the bulk of advanced CPU and GPU production in Taiwan. As such, if we're going to make adjustments so that we do try to plan ahead for potential disruption we need to incentivize companies that need fabs to produce their advanced devices to invest in some domestic production so that we're not over a barrel if China decides to invade Taiwan. I'd rather have Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, etc. make some investment and take some ownership in Intel than for the US government to do it. This is essentially what Craig Barrett has been proposing as well.

If TSMC diseaper tomorrow, people will still buy computers, with chips made from Korea, or China, who cares. What are apple or Nvidia risking? They have worked hard to lock their customer. The problem is for the US military.

Apple & Nvidia switching to, say, Samsung as their foundry would likely take at least a year before they'd start to see production. Meanwhile, little to no revenue. It is a risk for them. And if China went for Taiwan, why not also cause some trouble for S Korea while they're at it? (Wouldn't have to invade, just block shipping, etc. - if China decided to do maximal damage. It's also quite possible that N Korea would take advantage of the situation)

I think it would be shorter, they work with Samsung to evaluate their option. And if China did went after TSMC (Taiwan and us) plus Samsung, Nvidia can still switch supplier (Intel?). The risk (let's say one year revenu) isn't worth joining the fab business. They have seen what happened to Intel and AND. And they know China will have good fabs in not too long. Nvidia true competitor is apple, and they are in the same boat.

I'd rather the citizens control the companies than the other way around.

Branding nationalizing companies as “citizens control” is quite the spin. Chinese citizens surely own the means of production, right?

I suppose that depends on whether said country is a democracy where citizens control the government or a dictatorship where they do not.

Nationalizing a company isn't communism and isn't intended to resemble it.

How is that not common/collective control of the means of production?

What would common or collective control mean? If everyone held "control" in common, it wouldn't be possible to do anything.

It is possible to nationalize a company, though. For example, Saudi Aramco is owned by the state.

How is that not common/collective control of the means of production?

1. A central government taking ownership of a company in lieu of everyone owning a share. 2. It is.

Indeed, it’s actually a horrific non-communist pro-capitalist version that leaves citizens much worse off - see “bailout socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for masses”.

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