00:00U.S. chipmaker Intel hasn't confirmed the Bloomberg report that Intel is in talks with the U.S.
00:06government to take a stake in the company. But if that's true, it would be a major shift when just
00:11last week, U.S. President Donald Trump was calling for the resignation of Intel's CEO. So how big of
00:17a comeback would this deal be for that relationship? But yeah, it would be quite the turnaround if this
00:23happens. I think if you look at the broader context, though, remember the Biden administration
00:31under the CHIPS Act was essentially exerting indirect control over Intel with the strings that were
00:38attached to the money that was to be delivered. So this isn't completely unprecedented, but in the
00:45direct way that the rumors are talking about, it's very new. Even before the calls for resignation,
00:52there was some tension between Intel and the White House. Trump has floated the idea of repealing
00:57the CHIPS Act, which would send nearly eight billion U.S. dollars to Intel. If the government
01:02does take a stake in the company, do you think the likelihood that they will actually get that money
01:07goes up? I think the likelihood goes up dramatically. Yeah, yeah. I think that if the goal is to have the
01:15backstop of the federal government and the funding that was promised from the CHIPS Act and more,
01:20then this would be a very, very good deal for Intel. The question would be, would this be something
01:26where it would be temporary, much like the bailout of General Motors, versus Intel being a strategic
01:34part of our strategy for AI moving forward and a good partner to partner with from a federal
01:40government perspective? Well, there's another firm that's supposed to get CHIPS Act money, and that's
01:45Taiwan's TSMC. They're slated to get more than six billion for their Arizona facilities. Now, they
01:50say they don't need that money, but if I'm sitting at TSMC headquarters, and I've just made the largest
01:55direct investment in U.S. history, and I hear the U.S. government is taking a stake in my competitor,
02:01Intel, how am I feeling right now? You wouldn't be feeling very good. And in fact, there are a lot of
02:08American companies that were very upset by the gesture toward Intel. There's a sense that Intel
02:15made its own bed, and that it should suffer the consequences of whatever failures it might have
02:20had along the way. There's this concept of being too big to fail, too important to fail. For example,
02:28there were rivals of Intel who flatly said, Taiwan Semiconductor beat Intel at certain games.
02:35That's why we choose to use TSMC instead of Intel. Why are we now subsidizing Intel? So no, there will
02:43be a lot of people who will be upset, companies that will be upset by this. All right, Dave, big picture.
02:50What's the main question in your mind about this potential Intel deal? Is the United States pivoting
02:56more in the direction of public-private partnerships like we're used to seeing in Europe and in some
03:04Asian countries that are almost a cultural anathema in the US at this point? A lot of people would
03:14be absolutely opposed to this. The big question that's at hand here is, is AI sufficiently different
03:22to warrant this different approach? Is this just a one-off or does this signal a fundamental change
03:30change in the way government and industry will behave in the US?
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