Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

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They want a source of chips for the wars they want to conduct that is not either controlled by the party they want to go war with, or way way closer to the party they want to go to war with than they are. Buying a chunk of Intel is a way of making sure they do the things the government wants that will lead to that outcome. Or at least so the theory goes; I've got my own cynicism on this matter and wouldn't dream of tamping down on anyone else's.

Right now if the US wants to go to war with China, or anyone China really really likes, they can expect with high probability to very quickly encounter major problems getting the best chips. AIUI the world has other fab capacity that isn't in Taiwan, and some of it is even in the US, but they're all on much older processes. Some things it's not a problem that maybe you end up with an older 500MHz processor, but some things it's just a non-starter, like high-end AI.

Sibling commenters discussing profits are on the wrong track. Intel's 2024 revenue, not profits, was $53.1 billion. The Federal Government in 2024 spent $6,800 billion. No entity doing $1.8 trillion in 2024 in deficit spending gives a rat's ass about "profits". The US Federal government just spends what it wants to spend, it doesn't have any need to generate any sort of "profits" first. Thinking the Federal government cares about profits is being nowhere near cynical enough.

This is generally true even setting side the "war with China" angle. Intel is a large domestic company employing hundreds of thousands in a very critical sector, and the government has every incentive to prevent it from failing. In the last two decades we've bailed out auto companies and banks and US Steel (kinda) for the same reason.

Concisely put. This is exactly the reasoning. The US is preparing for a potential war with China in 2026 or 2027, and this is how it is beginning preparations.

> Right now if the US wants to go to war with China

The US is desperate to not have that war, because they spent so long in denial about how sophisticated China has become that it would be a total humiliation. What you see as the US wanting war is them simply playing catch up.

I find it funny that people talk about a US/China war as a real possibility. You are aware that that would be the end of life on earth as we know it, right?

What even would be the goals of such wars?

Destroy the other country?

Take it over?

Be in a 1984 style „fake“ war forever?

Pretty likely, I think, it'd be a geographically restricted war.

The countries wouldn't fire nukes against each other's mainlands but maybe against each other's fleets. Pretty likely

We haven’t really tested the idea of a geographically restricted war. During the Cold War there were some pretty transparent proxy wars, but the proxy still allowed for backing out and saving face.

I don’t think geographically restricting a war is even possible, really. The US’s typical game plan involves hitting the enemy’s decision-making capabilities faster than they can react. That goes out the window if we can’t hit each other’s mainlands. A war where we don’t get to use our strongest trick and China keeps their massive industrial base is an absurd losing one that the US would be totally nuts to sign up for.

Anyway, we and China can be perfectly good peaceful competitors.

Unfortunately, "it would end life on Earth as we know it" is not, on its own terms, a thing that will stop it from happening. All it takes is the people who can make the decision deciding to do it because they think they will come out ahead, and not caring about what it may do to anyone else. And they don't even have to be right. They just have to think they will come out ahead.

Don't mistake talking about a thing as advocating for that thing. It leaves you completely unable to process international politics, and frankly, a lot of other news and discussion as well. If you can only think about things you approve of, your model of the world is worse than useless.

Sure, but this is an interesting independent of the government holding Intel stock.

The US government always ought to have the interest of US companies in mind, their job is to work in the interest of the voters and a lot of us work for US companies.

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