491
By Trump admin, do we mean the US Federal Government?
this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2025
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when the trump admin is identical to the us federal govt, there will be no doubt about the matter.
How is this legal?
It's a bailout where the taxpayers actually get something back.
How is it legal to bail out whole banks or other large companies and not get anything in return?
It wasn’t a bailout. It was a grant being converted to an equity position with questionable legality.
Also how is not socialism? Imagine the wailing from Repugnants if the Democrats did this.
Please Google socialism.
Socialism is social ownership of the means of production. This ain’t it. This is Turbo Capitalism.
Public ownership of companies for the benefit of the public is a form of socialism, but Trump's fascist oligarchy serves only the wealthy elites. Oligarchs hijacking democracy for their own benefit isn't socialism.
Now THAT'S some mental gymnastics!
It is socialism, between them
Beyond the greater issues of corruption, at face value there's no reason the government buying up a company with important strategic value should be illegal
It’s basically the GM bailout but with less steps and specifically avoiding bankruptcy which seems more efficient. Not that the gov’t won’t just turn around and run Intel into the ground.
I hope they lose billions on this deal. I know I'm only going with AMD now. It's not much, but I do buy all the tech for my company. Servers, laptops, etc... will all be AMD going forward.
Not having competition is not a good thing. I hope a third player comes along.
Literally illegal. Only AMD and Intel have the patent cross-licensing rights to make x86 chips. There used to be a third company (Cyrix and subsequently VIA), and (maybe?) still is, but it hasn't been relevant to the desktop CPU market in decades.
The real competition will come from ARM-based computers.
Or riscv
We don’t need competition in the x86 space, we need competition in the mobile/desktop/server space. That could easily be performance competitive ARM or RISC-v or whatever. Better even with diversity of design.
Enterprise ARM servers exist, I’ve used them, they’re neat.
With a proper stack you don’t even notice they’re arm
Heck of an industry to break into.
Competitor is already here. Apple and Ampere are making ARM systems that fit most users needs. There are ARM servers. But people don’t want to switch.
Apple doesn't really exist as a competitor for a number of industries and use cases due to not officially supporting anything other than OSX so I'm not sure if they're a fair comparison here.
The only real edge they have is in non-gaming related consumer workloads.
They do fine with content creation. Windows 11 has been such a bear many are moving back, and the m-series mac mini is a surprisingly capable little box that’s not offensively priced.
Asahi Linux has made fantastic progress too. It’s really just bare metal windows that’s a problem anymore on these and nobody wants windows anymore anyways. It’s just what they have. Outside of gaming it’s largely unnesscarry to use windows in 2025.
I'd buy a macbook, but it's a lot more expensive than my "throw Linux on a used corporate thinkpad" approach, and I can tolerate macOS, but don't love it. If you're in the market for a new premium laptop, I think they're pretty established, and I do think people are buying them.
Ampere workstations are cool, but in a price range where most customers are probably corporate, and they'll mostly buy what they know works. I think their offerings are mostly niche for engineers who do dev work with stuff that will run on arm servers.
I'd say non-corporate arm adoption will grow when there's more affordable new and used options from mainstream manufacturers. Most people won't go for an expensive niche option, and probably don't care about architecture. Most Apple machines probably sell because they're Apple machines, not because of the chip inside.
I don't know exact numbers, but I do feel that arm server adoption isn't going to badly, especially with new web servers.
I wouldn’t buy a used Lenovo right now. There’s a lot of 13th/14th gen Intel trash blowing around out there right now that’s been silently damaged already. There are Ryzen based Lenovos but those aren’t as common.
Probably applies to most used Laptops right now. Also, I have some thinkpad nostalgia, but the similar skus from other manufacturers will also do, though they put course have the same problem.
Generally, you of course always need to research the specific hardware. Also, my current one is on 8th gen, still does the job for now.
I own an M1 MacBook. I don’t use it nearly as much as my main pc (gaming laptop with CachyOS (Arch-based, btw)) but it’s very well built and is well optimized. If I could get the build of a MacBook but with the specs of my gaming pc without spending 2x the price as I would on a pre-build windows machine I would absolutely do it.
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I've been building computers since 1999, and I've noticed that the industry is cyclical. I've purchased CPUs from both Intel and AMD. We need Intel to succeed, otherwise AMD will dominate the x86 processor market.
Modern times aren't like the past.
Don't get me wrong, the market will probably be worse if Intel were to go bust (certainly in the short term), but it wouldn't be anywhere near as devastating as it would've been 10, 15, 20 years ago.
x86 isn't the only viable architecture in town anymore.
Apple and others have proven that ARM is certainly viable for PCs.
Yes, Qualcomm's X Elite was a complete dud, but that's more on their/MS's absolute shit show of driver/firmware/graphics API development, not on the hardware. Nvidia's ARM stuff is already more mature.
Now imagine if Intel disappeared. AMD simply would not be able to meet the demand required, it'd tigger an arms race of companies pushing ARM and RISC-V development. Nvidia has not kept it secret that they want to get more into CPUs.
Shit, as unlikely as it initially seems, there's so much money on the table that Apple could even consider selling SoCs (although even if they did, I imagine they'd retain the best for themselves, or charge a huge premium).
I don't think people should be as worried about a lack of competition as they were when AMD was facing bankruptcy. The market is different now, and it's in a state of fairly quick evolution.
The architecture is in its swan song anyways. Let AMD ride it into the sunset and bid it good riddance.
intel must still be hanging on purely based on corporate computers? or is there something else they are a large part of?
this just be in my bubble, but i feel like anyone i know over the last 15 years has been exclusively getting AMD, whether theyre tech savvy or just a regular consumer.
15 years? absolutely not. Before Ryzen in 2017 almost no one was buying AMD.
edit:
AMD is at 32.2% unit share of Desktop/Laptop PCs in Q2 2025. Lots of people still buying Intel.
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I got a new work laptop recently. First one I've ever had that didn't have an Intel cpu. Company is a decent sized multinational.
I think it's already turning. But at the same time I don't think the US can afford to let Intel fail entirely.
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Ars is making a mountain out of a molehill.
James McRitchie
Kristin Hull
These are literal activists investors known for taking such stances. It would be weird if they didn't.
a company that's not in crisis
Intel is literally circling the drain. It doesn't look like it on paper, but the fab/chip design business is so long term that if they don't get on track, they're basically toast. And they're also important to the military.
Intel stock is up, short term and YTD. CNBC was ooing and aahing over it today. Intel is not facing major investor backlash.
Of course there are blatant issues, like:
However, the US can vote "as it wishes," Intel reported, and experts suggested to Reuters that regulations may be needed to "limit government opportunities for abuses such as insider trading."
And we all know they're going to insider trade the heck out of it, openly, and no one is going to stop them. Not to speak of the awful precedent this sets.
But the sentiment (not the way the admin went about it) is not a bad idea. Government ties/history mixed with private enterprise are why TSMC and Samsung Foundry are where they are today, and their bowed-out competitors are not.
Would it be the same as if they did the same with Boeing? If they were circling the drain? Since Boeing literally makes military planes for the US goververment, so that means that they can't fail lest say they got bought by some Chinese or XYZ interest outside of the USA. So then those new owners would have access to highly classified designs and schematics that the military uses.
Shrug. The DoD is notorious for trying to keep competition between its suppliers alive. But I don’t know enough about the airplane business to say they’re in a death spiral or not.
The fab business is a bit unique because of the sheer scaling of planning and capital involved.
I dunno why you brought up China/foreign interests though. Intel’s military fab designs would likely never get sold overseas, and neither would the military arm of Boeing. I wouldn’t really care about that either way…
This is just about keeping one of three leading edge processor fabs on the planet alive, and of course the gov is a bit worried about the other two in Taiwan and South Korea.
No, I didn't say that they were, but more like agreeing with the point that if Boeing was in deep financial problems that the FED could do the same because of the strategic concern to National Security if it were to be available to be sold or merge with others in the open market. No way the FED would allow it and would bail them out and a way to do that would be to purchase a physical stake in the company as a way to infuse operating funds into it.
I was agreeing with OP.
noice, i respect a follow up that is honest about limits of their opinion and their knowledge. Opinion, i do think boeing should be partly absorbed, but i also believe this about certain foods that are on the store shelves for certain periods of time. Sort of like generic but publicly managed to an extent, keep competition open while maintaining security over long established and basics of human need and advancement, this was from a period of time i was not watching the fall of the US to a pedo rapist octogenarian.
Investors should be going after executives who ran the company into the ground.
Also, intel could've refused the money. Nobody forcing them to take 11 billion of taxpayer dollars
Really, cos the graph looks like they bounced back to near 12 month highs?
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