4 ms·

Intel is a great example of the fact that between stupidity and low-integrity behavior as a default, the people in charge fuck up in ways that the man on the st

Intel is a great example of the fact that between stupidity and low-integrity behavior as a default, the people in charge fuck up in ways that the man on the street would get right. Defense is starting to get a blank check with fairly bipartisan support for the first time in at least 30-40 years and it's centered on semiconductor supply chains. There has never been a better time to secure the fucking funding, have ASML send twice as many people as they already have, and power through it. The market is whatever you want and the margins are whatever you want: in a functioning system? You fucking do it. And while I will believe that Intel has suffered serious attrition in key posts, there's no way that the meta-knowledge of how to debug "we don't have the fabs running right, who do we hire, what so we need to give them to get it done" has evaporated in 5-10 years from the singular source of this institutional muscle memory in the history of the world. The failing here is more like a failing in courage, or stamina, grit, something. It's a failure of the will to do the right thing for both the shareholders and the country.

Spivak 1y ago
tl;dr Intel desperately needs an activist investor.
- benreesman 1y ago
  Only if that activist investor acts with decisiveness, vision, long-term goal orientation, and demonstrates consistently high-integrity behavior. What has much more commonly produced good outcomes in such situations is robust public-private partnerships like the ones that produced the semiconductor industry in the first place. Run the list of innovations in strategically key technology and what will you find at one remove in every instance? The DoD, NASA, the Labs and ATT more broadly, the university system. It's always a public/private partnership during periods of explosive value creation when the stakes are high, and it's always a private sector capture orgy during periods of extractive stagnation like the present.
  - Spooky23 1y ago
    Bad news. We’re exploding NSF, NASA and many parts of DoD. Universities are uncertain as those acts are digested. That era of American history has passed. Innovation gives way to consolidation and cronyism. Think Mussolini’s Italy.
    - avn2109 1y ago
      If you have any evidence for the claim that "many parts of DoD" are being exploded/defunded, it would be really interesting to see that. As far as I can see, just the opposite is true; the military industrial complex looks like it's increasing in size and scope.
      - Spooky23 1y ago
        The recent budget cut about 5% from the DoD research budget. A lot of cash is going to be redeployed towards tilting at the windmill of domestic ballistic missile defense… while we’re watching a war in Ukraine where cheap drones are demonstrating that most major weapons platforms are functionally obsolete.
    - dreamcompiler 1y ago
      Remember what finally happened to Mussolini?
    - benreesman 1y ago
      We've had crime season gilded ages before. We've had trusts and corruption before. I agree that on present course and heading we are not going to make it out of this one in anything like the position we're accustomed to, but it's not impossible and frankly it wouldn't even take that much. Forums like HN full of senior technologists and future founders are disproportionately high impact. If the tone around here shifted a little to stop excusing what YC has become and start embracing how it all started? Shit like that adds up. geohotz had that post a few weeks ago about this late capitalism internet shit, he was pretty deep in with the Effective Altruists and he got it together. I said at the time and I'll say again, you get a few more people like that to sober up? pmarca and lex and people? Maybe even pg? Real change happens that way.
- dv_dt 1y ago
  Imho activist investors are usually about cutting investment in the future, maximizing the current accessible profits, collecting a wad of cash, then letting the company die while moving off to be active on another board.
- rossjudson 1y ago
  Intel needs a full-time board that gives a shit about whether the company succeeds. You could populate that board with nearly any combination of capable founder types and you'd get far better results. The current board is a pack of cargo-culting epitaph writers.
  - benreesman 1y ago
    They're a particularly egregious example of what corporate governance has become, but they're cut from largely the same cloth as the rest of our leadership class. Maybe a little dumber than average, a little more short-sighted, but devoid of any notion of obligation? I forget the name of the speaker guy who has this turn of phrase, but whatever the merits of his overall platform this hits perfectly: "People doing well today are using every means at their disposal to decrease their accountability while increasing their compensation. If you don't compensate people based on the responsibility they are willing to undertake, you will get a world run by people like this and it will look like the world you live in right now".
throw0101b 1y ago
> Defense is starting to get a blank check with fairly bipartisan support for the first time in at least 30-40 years and it's centered on semiconductor supply chains. Really? Because: > During Donald Trump's 2025 speech to a joint session of Congress, the president asked House Speaker Mike Johnson to “get rid” of the subject act.[190] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act#Subsequent_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act#Subseque...
CamperBob2 1y ago
The climate of uncertainty under Trump inhibits long-term investment, whether in chip fabs, car factories, or anything else. He has reminded us all of something that's really always been a problem: whatever one Congress or one POTUS supports can be undone by the next. Usually opposing parties have had the common sense not to immediately hit the undo button once they take office. E.g., Biden leaving most of Trump's previous nutty tariffs in place. But "common sense" isn't on the agenda these days. We are, to all intents and purposes, under attack from within.
- benreesman 1y ago
  The decline in what we expect of our leaders has been going on my entire life and the contrast between 20 years ago and the present is stark. In 1998 Meriwether and the rest of LTCM nearly crashed the economy, needed the Fed to get involved, and they were personally ruined, guy never opened a ten thousand dollar bottle of wine again and probably never had anything again. Shortly thereafter, Jeff Skilling took out offices in 9 cities and pension plans all over the country with shady accounting. 24 years in prison (reduced later to 14). Ebbers/Worldcom 2002: died in prison. By 2008? Zero prosecutions. Bonuses the next year. Around the same time Clinton got caught lying about chasing (consenting and of age) skirt in the Office: nearly ended his presidency, definitely ended his policy agenda, real consequences and he caught a shooting star to avoid far worse. The public was not going to accept it, Congress was not going to let it slide on either side of the aisle. Today? Something like that barely makes the press. You have to be accused of sex trafficking to even get an investigation started and everyone will probably walk. The idea that this became uniquely bad in January, or even 2016 is demonstrably untrue. At some time in the last 30 years we started accepting leadership who are dishonest, nakedly self-interested, lie without consequences, enrich themselves via extraction rather than value creation, collude with no oversight, and sell out the public. This is a completely bipartisan consensus on these norms. Speaking for myself, I think Trump represents a new low, but not by much, he's just the next increment in what history will probably call the Altman Era if his ascent to arbitrary power on zero substance continues on it's current trajectory.
  - daymanstep 1y ago
lenerdenator 1y ago
> It's a failure of the will to do the right thing for both the shareholders and the country. They've been doing the exact right thing for the shareholders: squeezing the living shit out of an asset (x86/64) for decades while cutting anything interesting or competitive to the bone to give shareholders more money. Money spent on something that could really have been competitive is money not sent to the retirement fund that keeps John and Jane Q. Public swinging in more ways than one at their golf course retirement community in Florida. The problem is, you can only do that for so long. There is a minimum spend to remain a competitive company with regard to being able to market products to consumers. Executives don't have a fiduciary duty to create the best possible product for consumers to look at and potentially buy in the marketplace, but they do have a fiduciary duty to shareholders to meet an earnings projection. If these two activities can coexist peacefully, great. If not, the first activity stops while the company gets gutted.
- benreesman 1y ago
  It's not actually good for the shareholders unless you have a divisor which is effort. Intel is a semiconductor company, investors that want to invest in treasuries or Exxon or whatever is considered extreme low-beta (ha, maybe not Exxon anymore, maybe Visa) have every opportunity to do so. The most expensive, highest-margin, technically advanced and risky business in the world is for investors who want that in their portfolio. If they wanted to milk a dying industry on the way down they would go buy Disney stock. It is very clearly in the interests of long-term investors in Intel to maintain a commanding position in fabrication: it's been the secret sauce of the company since the very beginning, it's never been more in demand. This idea that companies are obligated to do what will deliver some little bump in the stock price in 90-180 days is everything from not how the rules work to just a lazy meme for people who don't want to earn their princely salaries. Don't make excuses for weakness at the top.
  - pishpash 1y ago
    Who are the marginal traders who determine prices though? Long-term holders don't trade. By the time they assert their view it's too late.

Spivak 1y ago

tl;dr Intel desperately needs an activist investor.

benreesman 1y ago
Only if that activist investor acts with decisiveness, vision, long-term goal orientation, and demonstrates consistently high-integrity behavior. What has much more commonly produced good outcomes in such situations is robust public-private partnerships like the ones that produced the semiconductor industry in the first place. Run the list of innovations in strategically key technology and what will you find at one remove in every instance? The DoD, NASA, the Labs and ATT more broadly, the university system. It's always a public/private partnership during periods of explosive value creation when the stakes are high, and it's always a private sector capture orgy during periods of extractive stagnation like the present.
- Spooky23 1y ago
  Bad news. We’re exploding NSF, NASA and many parts of DoD. Universities are uncertain as those acts are digested. That era of American history has passed. Innovation gives way to consolidation and cronyism. Think Mussolini’s Italy.
  - avn2109 1y ago
    If you have any evidence for the claim that "many parts of DoD" are being exploded/defunded, it would be really interesting to see that. As far as I can see, just the opposite is true; the military industrial complex looks like it's increasing in size and scope.
    - Spooky23 1y ago
      The recent budget cut about 5% from the DoD research budget. A lot of cash is going to be redeployed towards tilting at the windmill of domestic ballistic missile defense… while we’re watching a war in Ukraine where cheap drones are demonstrating that most major weapons platforms are functionally obsolete.
  - dreamcompiler 1y ago
    Remember what finally happened to Mussolini?
  - benreesman 1y ago
    We've had crime season gilded ages before. We've had trusts and corruption before. I agree that on present course and heading we are not going to make it out of this one in anything like the position we're accustomed to, but it's not impossible and frankly it wouldn't even take that much. Forums like HN full of senior technologists and future founders are disproportionately high impact. If the tone around here shifted a little to stop excusing what YC has become and start embracing how it all started? Shit like that adds up. geohotz had that post a few weeks ago about this late capitalism internet shit, he was pretty deep in with the Effective Altruists and he got it together. I said at the time and I'll say again, you get a few more people like that to sober up? pmarca and lex and people? Maybe even pg? Real change happens that way.
dv_dt 1y ago
Imho activist investors are usually about cutting investment in the future, maximizing the current accessible profits, collecting a wad of cash, then letting the company die while moving off to be active on another board.
rossjudson 1y ago
Intel needs a full-time board that gives a shit about whether the company succeeds. You could populate that board with nearly any combination of capable founder types and you'd get far better results. The current board is a pack of cargo-culting epitaph writers.
- benreesman 1y ago
  They're a particularly egregious example of what corporate governance has become, but they're cut from largely the same cloth as the rest of our leadership class. Maybe a little dumber than average, a little more short-sighted, but devoid of any notion of obligation? I forget the name of the speaker guy who has this turn of phrase, but whatever the merits of his overall platform this hits perfectly: "People doing well today are using every means at their disposal to decrease their accountability while increasing their compensation. If you don't compensate people based on the responsibility they are willing to undertake, you will get a world run by people like this and it will look like the world you live in right now".

throw0101b 1y ago

> Defense is starting to get a blank check with fairly bipartisan support for the first time in at least 30-40 years and it's centered on semiconductor supply chains. Really? Because: > During Donald Trump's 2025 speech to a joint session of Congress, the president asked House Speaker Mike Johnson to “get rid” of the subject act.[190] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act#Subsequent_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act#Subseque...

CamperBob2 1y ago

The climate of uncertainty under Trump inhibits long-term investment, whether in chip fabs, car factories, or anything else. He has reminded us all of something that's really always been a problem: whatever one Congress or one POTUS supports can be undone by the next. Usually opposing parties have had the common sense not to immediately hit the undo button once they take office. E.g., Biden leaving most of Trump's previous nutty tariffs in place. But "common sense" isn't on the agenda these days. We are, to all intents and purposes, under attack from within.

benreesman 1y ago
The decline in what we expect of our leaders has been going on my entire life and the contrast between 20 years ago and the present is stark. In 1998 Meriwether and the rest of LTCM nearly crashed the economy, needed the Fed to get involved, and they were personally ruined, guy never opened a ten thousand dollar bottle of wine again and probably never had anything again. Shortly thereafter, Jeff Skilling took out offices in 9 cities and pension plans all over the country with shady accounting. 24 years in prison (reduced later to 14). Ebbers/Worldcom 2002: died in prison. By 2008? Zero prosecutions. Bonuses the next year. Around the same time Clinton got caught lying about chasing (consenting and of age) skirt in the Office: nearly ended his presidency, definitely ended his policy agenda, real consequences and he caught a shooting star to avoid far worse. The public was not going to accept it, Congress was not going to let it slide on either side of the aisle. Today? Something like that barely makes the press. You have to be accused of sex trafficking to even get an investigation started and everyone will probably walk. The idea that this became uniquely bad in January, or even 2016 is demonstrably untrue. At some time in the last 30 years we started accepting leadership who are dishonest, nakedly self-interested, lie without consequences, enrich themselves via extraction rather than value creation, collude with no oversight, and sell out the public. This is a completely bipartisan consensus on these norms. Speaking for myself, I think Trump represents a new low, but not by much, he's just the next increment in what history will probably call the Altman Era if his ascent to arbitrary power on zero substance continues on it's current trajectory.
- daymanstep 1y ago

lenerdenator 1y ago

> It's a failure of the will to do the right thing for both the shareholders and the country. They've been doing the exact right thing for the shareholders: squeezing the living shit out of an asset (x86/64) for decades while cutting anything interesting or competitive to the bone to give shareholders more money. Money spent on something that could really have been competitive is money not sent to the retirement fund that keeps John and Jane Q. Public swinging in more ways than one at their golf course retirement community in Florida. The problem is, you can only do that for so long. There is a minimum spend to remain a competitive company with regard to being able to market products to consumers. Executives don't have a fiduciary duty to create the best possible product for consumers to look at and potentially buy in the marketplace, but they do have a fiduciary duty to shareholders to meet an earnings projection. If these two activities can coexist peacefully, great. If not, the first activity stops while the company gets gutted.

benreesman 1y ago
It's not actually good for the shareholders unless you have a divisor which is effort. Intel is a semiconductor company, investors that want to invest in treasuries or Exxon or whatever is considered extreme low-beta (ha, maybe not Exxon anymore, maybe Visa) have every opportunity to do so. The most expensive, highest-margin, technically advanced and risky business in the world is for investors who want that in their portfolio. If they wanted to milk a dying industry on the way down they would go buy Disney stock. It is very clearly in the interests of long-term investors in Intel to maintain a commanding position in fabrication: it's been the secret sauce of the company since the very beginning, it's never been more in demand. This idea that companies are obligated to do what will deliver some little bump in the stock price in 90-180 days is everything from not how the rules work to just a lazy meme for people who don't want to earn their princely salaries. Don't make excuses for weakness at the top.
- pishpash 1y ago
  Who are the marginal traders who determine prices though? Long-term holders don't trade. By the time they assert their view it's too late.