Pentagon Scraps $2.5 Billion Grant To Intel (seekingalpha.com) 38
According to Bloomberg (paywalled), the Pentagon has reportedly scrapped its plan to allocate $2.5 billion in grants to Intel, causing the firm's stock to slip in extended-hours trading. From a report: The decision now leaves the U.S. Commerce Department, which is responsible for doling out the funds from the U.S. CHIPs and Science Act, to make up the shortfall, the news outlet said. The Commerce Dept. was initially only supposed to cover $1B of the $3.5B that Intel is slated to receive for advanced defense and intelligence-related semiconductors. The deal is slated to position Intel as the dedicated supplier for processors used for military and intelligence applications and could result in a Secure Enclave inside Intel's chip factory, the news outlet said. With the Pentagon reportedly pulling out, it could alter how much Intel and other companies receive from the CHIPs Act, the news outlet said.
Diversity Quotas (Score:5, Interesting)
Are the reason why Intel didn't receive the grants.
https://thehill.com/opinion/4517470-dei-killed-the-chips-act/
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One would think it would be a good thing to expand the potential pool of future employees and expand the skiils base rather than continuing down the same path which has seen your company stagnate and lose market share.
But that's just me.
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Who said anything about "scraping the bottom of the barrel"? I can guarantee there are plenty of people who could fill these jobs but because they don't have the connections or aren't the right skin color, they'll never be selected.
This reminds me when people say the most qualified should be hired, and I suggest to do blind hiring. Unsurprisingly they agree to this, right up until the moment it's revealed blind hiring increases the diversity of a workplace.
And why bring up "mentally ill" into this? Might
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>This reminds me when people say the most qualified should be hired, and I suggest to do blind hiring. Unsurprisingly they agree to this, right up until the moment it's revealed blind hiring increases the diversity of a workplace.
When I suggested this to Intel management, I ended up in a heated discussion with the head of HR Richard Taylor, where i spelled out to him that his policies of race and gender based hiring were illegal.
Now any firm that is trying to do this is asking to be sued, now that the su
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>This reminds me when people say the most qualified should be hired, and I suggest to do blind hiring. Unsurprisingly they agree to this, right up until the moment it's revealed blind hiring increases the diversity of a workplace.
When I suggested this to Intel management, I ended up in a heated discussion with the head of HR Richard Taylor, where i spelled out to him that his policies of race and gender based hiring were illegal.
Now any firm that is trying to do this is asking to be sued, now that the supreme court has firmly rejected affirmative action programs, despite the executive branch trying to shove it down our throats.
You didn't lose your job to a "diversity hire". I know the type, you're on "the list" for plenty of good reasons, layoffs come around and you're the real victim because of reverse racism, while your former coworkers ironically wave goodbye with no comment.
Because nobody ever complains about all the good folks the company lost to "DEI", it's always coming from someone that was on "the list". Every. Single. Time.
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This reminds me when people say the most qualified should be hired, and I suggest to do blind hiring. Unsurprisingly they agree to this, right up until the moment it's revealed blind hiring increases the diversity of a workplace.
If this were true, there wouldn't be such a push to hire based on skin color.
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They're trying to hire based on skin color to remedy their hiring systems which discriminated against PoC from their inception up until recently.
As usual there will be some backlash, the system will slop around until it reaches equilibrium. There would have been less of this if it had been addressed sooner, but a bunch of rich racists prevented it from happening by deliberately promoting culture wars to retard progress, because the status quo was making them richer.
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This reminds me when people say the most qualified should be hired, and I suggest to do blind hiring. Unsurprisingly they agree to this, right up until the moment it's revealed blind hiring increases the diversity of a workplace.
If this were true, there wouldn't be such a push to hire based on skin color.
What push? Increasing diversity is not the same thing as hiring based on skin color, and you know it. It's how your company advertises itself to prospective employees, where you do job fairs, accommodating single parents that need to pick up drop off kids, people that live further from your worksites, things like that.
Why would I spend a dime on a billboard aimed exactly at the person already walking in the door to join my work crew? That makes no sense. I also can't think of a single reason anyone should b
Re: Diversity Quotas (Score:3)
Mmhmm, because TSMC and Samsung give a single shit about the intricacies of American race relations. Wait no... no they don't. It's not just Intel hitting the brakes on further US expansion, it's all of them. They do not want to have to deal with subpar employees, which is all that DEI generates.
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And people doing the interviews still tend to hire people who look and sound like themselves, because it makes them feel comfortable.
If you have a room full of people who went to similar schools/Unis, have similar cultural influences, otherwise similar backgrounds, th
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Blind hiring is NOT DEI. If the CHIPS act had required blind hiring, Intel, Samsung, and TSMC would have grumbled at having to set such a system up but gone along with it. DEI is pretty much the exact opposite of blind hiring.
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GOP seems to think it's a good idea.
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Yep, because desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel for the most failing(the american black population as a proportion of population admittance in college vs graduation from college) and mentally ill(transgenders have much higher populations of mental illness, and in fact the recent WPATH doc docu dump shows that they know this but rather than treat those things first they are lopping off body parts and doping children with irreversible chemicals) sectors of an overall population is a great way to get things done.
Back in your daddy's day they had camps for those bottom of the barrel people.
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>> why Intel didn't receive the grants
Someone's bogus personal opinion that starts of with; 'the identity-obsessed dogma that goes by “diversity, equity, and inclusion”
And then blabbers on from there.
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Strong claims require strong evidence. Come back when you find some.
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Why do you think Intel went to shit?
They fired all of the old white men and tried to replace them with diversity hires, so they would qualify for tax breaks and would reduce their spending.
Then what proceeded is them failing for a number of years to get past 12nm features, while all of their expert talent that they laid of went elsewhere.
>source
I worked there.
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Hahaha no.
It's kind of funny kind of sad how reactionary, stupid and blindly partisan a lot of old slashdotters have gone. 15 years ago you would have ascribed it to being business led rather than engineer led, which is why the MBAs fired all the expensive, experienced engineers and replaced them with cheaper ones.
Now you've somehow managed to wrap it up in your culture war insanity and managed to convince yourself that profit driven corporate raiding is somehow a left wing thing.
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From this customer's perspective, Intel were utterly dishonest fucks all the way back to at least 1991, with the 28F010 flash production outsourced fab debacle. This was not "diversity", it was arrogant, dishonest, 8 AM arrival monitored, white male necktie wearing butt-snorkling MBA cult management and lying salesman malfeasance.
A year of my life was wasted qualifying that part for high-rel extended temperature, then finding that these parts were built in a prototype fab that got reassigned probably to Pe
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Folks, you all have to metamod to get mods points, then use them, else this bigoted sock puppet driven crap will keep popping up ^
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That's a curious position to take, since the US Military is one of the most diverse institutions around. It seems to work pretty well for them.
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Are the reason why Intel didn't receive the grants.
https://thehill.com/opinion/45... [thehill.com]
TFA is talking about an entirely different DoD/Pentagon grant that was cancelled by the Pentagon, and TFA says the CHIPS act will now make up the difference. It's in TFS for Christ's sake!
"The decision now leaves the U.S. Commerce Department, which is responsible for doling out the funds from the U.S. CHIPs and Science Act, to make up the shortfall"
How does that in any way fit with your misguided opinion piece that companies are rejecting CHIPS money - because DEI!111 - when the article is about CHIPS/Comme
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"The Pentagon has reportedly ended its plan to put forth $2.5B on a grant for semiconductor giant Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the situation."
"The decision now leaves the U.S. Commerce Department, which is responsible for doling out the funds from the U.S. CHIPs and Science Act, to make up the shortfall, the news outlet said." https://seekingalpha.com/news/... [seekingalpha.com]
BullCHIPs (Score:2)
With the Pentagon reportedly pulling out, it could alter how much Intel and other companies receive from the CHIPs Act, the news outlet said.
And what say a President who made all manner of promises to American citizens regarding making both jobs and chips with that Act?
Just wondering how much of that talk was campaign-grade, and comes with a clause contingent upon snow flurries in Hades.
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All of it, the same as every election year and both parties.
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All of it, the same as every election year and both parties.
You forgot about the gullible taxpayers who clap like seals for more of that shit every year, and believe them every time.
Root cause.
Strategic resources (Score:2)
If we actually consider semiconductors a strategic resource for our weapons, as our cold-war with China over the fabs would seem to indicate we do, then Biden has repeatedly screwed the pooch when trying to encourage US-based production. The CHIPS bill was a nonstarter from the jump, given that they burdened it with a clause prohibiting excessive profits - basically if the semiconductor companies made over a certain amount they'd have to share with the government - a ludicrous proposition that would just m
AI focus? (Score:3)
That's all speculation. My personal speculation is the Pentagon decided the future is AI chips, and that's not Intel's forte. Thus, they decided to eye AI-centric companies instead before signing a check. Intel may still eventually get it, but Pentagon wants to shop around first.
See, no politics or culture wars needed for some theories. Different, ain't it.
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See, no politics or culture wars needed for some theories. Different, ain't it.
Different in an ignorant way, if you think Ukraine is "politics or culture wars", or think it isn't a major consideration given the intense messaging of the administration about it. It's a very real issue that they're struggling tenaciously not to let go of even though it's already a lost cause, so expect to see them spend every cent they can scrounge up without congressional authorization on it.
Tax dollars (Score:1)
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Pretty much sums it up. Intel has enough cash on hand (not just liquid assets) to build their own fab. But somehow they need our money to do it? Fuuuuuuck them.
Bernie said... (Score:2)
Senator Bernie Sanders on the ChiPs Act [youtube.com]: "Some of my colleagues in the Senate want to give in to the extortion of the microchip industry and hand them a $76 billion blank check. I say instead let’s enact the agenda the American people want."
Maybe the CHIPS act should have built a fab? (Score:3)
I think the CHIPS act would have been better off where the government contracts out fabs to be built. There would be two types of fabs:
Stuff around 20 nm, which is focused on efficiency and yield. Not everything needs to be done on the latest process node. For example, MCUs that should be going for a cent each, what matters is getting as many as possible per wafer. The process needs to be simple, economical, and environmentally friendly because this is used to crank out stuff en masse.
The latest and greatest. Every 5-7 years, build another fab to keep up with the smallest node. It may be 3nm (going by TSMCs measurements) now, but going to 1 nm, etc... every 3-5 years. This is intended for the fastest CPUs out there.
This is not just money thrown to a chip company for promises of possibly considering building a fab, but the government contracting out the building of a fab, which the government owns, and allows fabless CPU/GPU/whateverPU designers to put their stuff in silicon. In peacetime, this means added revenue for the US government, and in wartime, it allows for design of stuff quite easily, on par with China which can turn any of SMIC's fabs into something making CPUs for weapons at a moment's notice.
Of course, if people don't like the government making a profit, the fab can be leased out so a private company can rake in the dough, once complete, similar to how toll roads are done in Texas.
Wow people a really stupid (Score:1)