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It's honestly wild that a sitting US president is calling out specific company CEOs. The fact that it was done in a tweet-esque post is even more concerning. I'
by jjcm 1y ago
It's honestly wild that a sitting US president is calling out specific company CEOs. The fact that it was done in a tweet-esque post is even more concerning. I'd expect that something like this would have been accompanied by a proper investigation and writeup stating the administration's perspective on why, but instead it's just "he's highly CONFLICTED".
I don't debate his history at Cadence Design is concerning from a national security point of view, but the approach the administration took really shows how we're in a different era of politics.
- tptacek 1y agoEh. Without getting anywhere near the merits of this particular fracas, the federal government has gotten deeply involved in critiquing the management of companies like Lockheed and Boeing, both for national security reasons and because of the importance of those companies to the economy. Easy to see Intel fitting into that mold in 2025.
- rco8786 1y agoI don’t recall a sitting President publicly calling for the CEO of either of those companies to resign. Please let’s not sanewash what is happening right now.
- bgwalter 1y agoPresident Obama: https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/gm-ceo-resigns-at-obamas-behest-020625 https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/gm-ceo-resigns-at-oba... Sen. Warren: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/embroiled-scandal-wells-fargo-ceo-resigns https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/embroiled-scandal-wells...
- rco8786 1y agoThese are news reports after the fact. It's not normal for a president to go on twitter and publicly deride someone into resigning.
- tptacek 1y agoThe norm that’s been transgressed here is getting more and more specific, isn’t it?
- rco8786 1y ago> a sitting President publicly calling for the CEO of either of those companies to resign. That was my original "norm" I stated. What has gotten more specific about that?
- magicmicah85 1y agoPublicly or privately, why is one fine and the other not?
- scarface_74 1y agoThe other hopefully happens after the President and his advisors talk behind the scenes. This isn’t a Republican vs Democrat thing. Republican presidents never did this before. And that happened as part of the government bailing GM out.
- rco8786 1y agoI'll answer this in earnest, assuming you're asking in good faith. The president commands an enormous amount of power, and has an army of people who will do his bidding and simply adopt his opinions on any number of subjects. Shouting out to millions of his followers to state that the CEO of a private company is "CONFLICTED" and must resign is, by any definition, propaganda. Propaganda that changes the minds of the citizens of the country, riles up the base, and does nothing productive except to stoke anger and fear. Working privately with this CEO, having a professional discussion with him, investigating the facts, determining that the best course of action for national security would be for him to step down, and maybe even putting some political pressure on that person to do so, and then publicly announcing the facts of what happened, is responsible governance. It's genuinely an enormous difference.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoThe GM CEO had presided over a time when GM got into such bad shape they needed a government bailout, and had to come back asking for even more government money. The Wells Fargo CEO presided over a major scandal involving customers being signed up for services they never agreed to. What has the Intel CEO presided over during his short tenure that measures up to those?
- tptacek 1y agoVastly increased attention on semiconductor companies as national security assets coupled with fairly extensive business relationships with companies controlled by America's chief geopolitical rival.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoOh, so not the same kind of thing at all then...
- tptacek 1y agoYou'll notice that none of the examples on this thread are the same things.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoYeah, it seems like a lot of hot air to prop up a false equivalency.
- tptacek 1y agoI suggest not asking questions you don't want the answers to.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoI suggest not normalizing Trump's behaviors by creating false equivalencies.
- tzs 1y agoI'd hardly call the GM situation comparable. In that case GM was asking the government for $16.6 billion (on top of $9.4 billion they had received under Bush). Asking a company that wants a nearly $17 billion bailout to make some changes is not at all unreasonable or unusual. As far as I know Intel is not asking the government for anything special, so having the government commenting on their internal organization is unusual.
- tptacek 1y agoPresumably all the teeth in the USG demands are about USG contracts.
- morkalork 1y agoLockheed's CEO Carl Kotchian resigned after political pressure but he brought it on himself.
- joules77 1y agoLook up the Teddy Roosevelt era. Before his election and after he leaves.
- scrubs 1y agoIt's not done by competent presidents. Trump is incompetent. Feds mind their own business except for doj, fbi, sec, fina who have evidence of wrong doing.
- gibbitz 1y agoMeh, Trump wants someone as loyal and willing to spy on us as he thinks this guy was for China. I love how the right detests regulation but is okay with arbitrarily monkeying directly in the management of a company like this with no rules around it. No company is safe under this guy.
- dkenyser 1y agoCorrection: The right detests regulation on the things they like at that given moment. If it doesn't affect them directly, or they can't perceive how it will affect them directly, they simply do not care.
- goatlover 1y agoThe MAGA right has demonstrated they have no principles other than whatever Trump wants at that given moment. We'll see whether the Epstein files is truly an exception to that.
- almostgotcaught 1y ago47% of Republicans would still vote for Trump even if he were implicated in Epstein's crimes: https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/U.S-Politics-Leger-338Canada-Maintenantmedia-FINAL.pdf https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/U.S-Politics... Page 28
- togetheragainor 1y agoIt can be very difficult for some people to separate their personal feelings about Trump from whether he’s on the right side of an issue.
- claytongulick 1y agoIt's nearly impossible for people to reason objectively about any political issue given the type of rhetoric that's fed to them 24/7. Here's a fun experiment. Take someone you know who's super passionate about a political figure, doesn't matter which one. Then tell them "everything you think you know about this person has been told to you by someone else".
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cnst 1y agoLike this? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/qwest-ceo-nsa-punished-qwest-refusing-participate-illegal-surveillance-pre-9-11 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/qwest-ceo-nsa-punished... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6033113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6033113
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoStupid flamebait. Not a sitting president and the NSA doesn't need a warrant for foreign targets.
- simoncion 1y ago> [T]he NSA doesn't need a warrant for foreign targets. That is correct. IIRC, FISA made that the law of the land since like the 1970s. However, Congress felt the need to provide retroactive immunity to the telcos who assisted in the FISA-violating wiretaps that the NSA demanded of them around the turn of the century. See Title II on printed page 32 of this [0] for more information, and check out newspaper coverage about the "FISA Amendments Act of 2008" around July, 2008. This grant of retroactive immunity was particularly outrageous because it mooted in-progress civil suits against those telcos, which is not something that's supposed to be done at scale... especially for civil liberties violations. That's a really odd thing to do if no law was violated, don't you think? [0] <https://web.archive.org/web/20101207052813/http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:h6304enr.txt.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20101207052813/http://frwebgate....>, found via following the chain of [1] -> [2] (because THOMAS is down today) -> [3] [1] the July 9th, 2008 entry here: <https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline> [2] <https://web.archive.org/web/20101209001911/http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110%3AHR6304%3A https://web.archive.org/web/20101209001911/http://thomas.loc...> [3] The PDF here of version 4 of the bill, because archive.org doesn't have the text version archived. <https://web.archive.org/web/20101207012221/http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.6304: https://web.archive.org/web/20101207012221/http://thomas.loc...>
- throwaway81523 1y agohttps://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/gm-ceo-resigns-at-obamas-behest-020625 https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/gm-ceo-resigns-at-oba...
- fundad 1y agoThey may have dropped the name China Initiative but all this tough talk on China (and immigration) primes the public to believe the worst. https://apnews.com/article/business-china-asia-beijing-race-and-ethnicity-c0cb26411f08f82d2ceda30f399d7003 https://apnews.com/article/business-china-asia-beijing-race-...
- tgma 1y agoThis administration (and the previous one) have been paying billions of dollars to chip companies to make fabs in the United States. Trump in particular is essentially trying to make sure Intel lives despite market forces. It is effectively a quasi-nationalized entity akin to major military-industrial complex entities. Given that, we are not talking about a random private entity. A US President making such statement about Intel is entirely justified.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago"Strategic" companies like Boeing and Intel get socialism for corporations and rich people, but then decry "socialism" and "communism" for everything and everyone who isn't rich.
- smsm42 1y ago> It's honestly wild that a sitting US president is calling out specific company CEOs This truly never happened before. Oh wait: https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/gm-ceo-resigns-at-obamas-behest-020625 https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/gm-ceo-resigns-at-oba...
- standardUser 1y agoNot an apt comparison. GM needed $50 billion in government funds just to stay alive.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- brahhd 1y agoAll of tech is propped up by the government. GenX and Millennials watched too many "Sprite; you do you" commercials and grew up believing in their autonomy and freedom. But American government was always at the wheel, via regulation, law, and drinks in DC off the clock. It's all PR to say our system free market and the like. Intel wouldn't exist without falling in line over the decades.
- otterley 1y agoIn what ways was the PC revolution propped up by the government?
- standardUser 1y agoLose the argument, change the conversation? An old tactic, but a stupid one.
- smsm42 1y agoSo we're moving from "it never happened, it's crazy!" to "of course it's happened before, but it's different this time, so I just falsely pretended the time before didn't happen"? Of course each case is different. But Presidents interfered in economy of private enterprise for a while - including criticizing CEOs, firing CEOs, and many other intrusive acts - especially after (and including) FDR, and pretending nobody before Trump ever did it is either ignorant or disingenuous. If you don't like what Trump is doing, great, explain why, but don't falsely claim things like that didn't happen before. They did.
- munificent 1y agoMust have been great to be buddies with Trump and get the heads up so you could short Intel right before his tweet.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoThe king, I mean unitary executive, has opinions and power to do all things without regard to law, without critical thinking or consideration if they are beneficial or harmful to humanity, and without boundaries. This is why Tim Apple presented Dear Leader with a 24K gold award and so was rewarded by a tariff exclusion.