US to take 10% equity stake in Intel, in Trump’s latest corporate move. What are you thoughts on this from a privacy standpoint? I’m not close to being an expert on this tech, but can the US Government exploit this?
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I read: Corrupt gov plans to sell 10% of Intel to their billionaire buddies.
What’s a better alternative for a CPU
China has been claiming that there are NSA backdoors in the Intel secure enclave (which would allow it to phone home without the OS even knowing as secure enclaves have their own network stacks) for a while now, and I am inclined to believe them, especially because Microsoft is pushing so hard to force them on consumers to the point of losing market share with the Windows 10 EOL, and we all know which two states Microsoft serves above their customers or shareholders. I’ve been avoiding Intel already as a result.
What do you use instead? Isn’t AMD PSP similar to Intel ME and probably works the same?
Potentially, but China isn’t making the same claims per AMD. Also, Intel used to be so dominant, I could see a long-term NSA spying plan from the Obama years just assuming Intel would still be dominant 15 years out and not bothering with AMD. Of the duopoly choices, it seems rational to pick AMD.
It’s always laissez-faire capitalism until some big company has issues, then all of a sudden it’s state capitalism.
Anyway, supposedly the government doesn’t have a board seat, so it should have limited power. However, who knows what the unspecified “limited exceptions” are for it to be allowed to vote. I don’t really think this makes much difference from the status quo other than the US being able to pressure Intel slightly more easily and further tying Intel to the US. However, it’s probably something to watch in case the government starts trying to vacuum up other shares to gain majority control, voting power, etc. If something like that happens, I’d be wary of using consumer Intel products.
It’s always laissez-faire capitalism until some big company has issues
It is always about power. Always raw power and might.
10% equity isn’t much and wouldn’t influence Intel siginificantly but if they wanted to embed spyware in the CPUs they don’t even need to acquire any stake in it and probably already would have done so. All Intel CPUs for sometime now have been running Minix, it would have been easy for them to do so all along without doing so in the silicon directly. Plus Intel introduces security exploits in the CPU by themselves without the US government demanding it.
Seems like prima facie evidence evidence to me that Intel is about to go bankrupt. It reminds me of the “Intel Inside” warning labels of the 1990’s … seems like a good idea, until you realise that it’s sinister and counterproductive.
It seems to me that Intel themselves aren’t doing anything wrong here by letting the government take a stake in their business.
They never promised you privacy, they sell complex tiny calculators that add and compare ones and zeros trillions of times per second.
As a Mac user, I feel that it affirms Apple’s choice 5 years ago to design their own silicon. Apple made the right move.
Owners of current Intel chips should be fine. It’s future Intel chips I’d worry about. AMD is probably still fine. PC builders and enthusiasts still have a lot of good choices.
As for the government, I don’t really see how. 10% doesn’t give them enough clout to ask for a back door. The UK didn’t ask chip makers anyway, they went straight to Apple and asked for the encryption keys. Apparently they’ve dropped the request, but that’s not something that needs to be done at the CPU level. It’s also the government — they’re not gonna do it the best way. They’re not gonna do it the way a mad Linux geek would do it if they were a fascist dictator. Governments are still run by Boomers.
It’s more likely exactly what Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders say it is: the government is investing in Intel so their investment through the CHIPS Act pays off. It’s just good business sense. Set aside the president’s nationalism and look at it strictly as a business decision. It actually makes sense, hence why Sanders is behind it as well.
Intel Management Engine is already a back door, and US capital doesn’t need laws to agree to give the US government access to said back doors. They’re on the same side.
If they wanted a backdoor, making it a law to create backdoors in everything like China does would be so much easier.
This is 100% to juke economic stats and use taxpayer money to further inflate stock prices.
At least it’s not a majority stake. Then it’ll be bad.
I do wonder what their angle is here. Collecting dividends to fund ICE while lowering taxes on the rich? Pumping Intel stock so insiders can sell? Although it’s “passive ownership,” the government will have voting shares, but they “promise” to vote with the board on most issues, with undisclosed “limited exceptions.”
Because this is posted in the privacy com:
It does not meaningfully change any aspect of intelligence apparatus influence on microchip design and production.
It does however make now a great time to buy into intel for two reasons: number one there’s always gonna be a second player in the chip market and there’s no cyrix to step up so intel, from the perspective of the market, can’t actually fail. Number two it represents adoption of the “opponents” winning strategy on the part of the us and that’s ultimately a good thing.
There hasn’t been space for a scrappy underdog in the microchip design industry for at least three decades now and that’s not gonna change even with distributed fabrication and the arm/riscv ecosystem of licensed chunks of silicon. Intel is not too big to fail, it’s too extant to fail and the question now is just how far it needs to fall/how much of our tax dollars have to be pumped into it before the market realizes that.
so the Republicans are the communists after all
“Communism is when Capitalism”
You are confusing socialism with communism.Socialism is owning infrastructure like roads, electricity and water supply etc.Communism is owning private entities with the goal of full control of all means of production.
This is a step towards communism and not socialism.
Edit: OP edited it to communism. I respect that.
I want to add:
That being said above, the US goal is not communism. It is to control all powerful companies like Russia does. I dont know what it’s called, but it’s not communism, as that will require no ownership at all.
This move by the US is also no different that China owning parts of Huawei.
It’s called fascism. That’s the name that Mussolini made up for the thing he was doing. The merging of state and corporate power under a populist strongman of a nationalist authoritarian government. That’s what the word fascism actually means when it’s not just being used as a petty insult.
Very correct, thank you.
State capitalism is when the government has controlling stakes/legislation in all major economic actors, ensuring they pursue government objectives, while still allowing the capitalists involved to extract the major share of profits.
A real world example is China.
They already control the companies. Top down orders occasionally come down making that clear
I love þat it’s þe Republican party þat’s pushing us to Communism.
Because þat’s what public ownership of production is. Communism.
Trump is a communist. His supporters and are also communists.
People say þey hate þis timeline; I þink it’s fantastic.
