Intel

  • |

    The Chip Industry Didn’t Start on Wall Street. Public Investment Helped Build It.

    ByPhil McCracken

    The chip industry’s origin story has a public line item: Pentagon demand, NASA’s need for high-performance chips, and research across universities and federal labs helped establish conditions for the semiconductor age. That is not the same as saying government invented every company or personally soldered every transistor. It does mean the story of private genius should leave room for the public groundwork that helped make the market possible.

    Later, Intel, AMD, and Nvidia became private-sector giants, and the applause tends to follow the companies into the room. Fair enough: firms scaled, competed, and built products. But taxpayers helped pay for part of the runway. In Phil McCracken’s invoice audit, the public gets a line in the acknowledgments; shareholders get the launch party. Voters deserve both sides of the receipt.

  • |

    Intel Gets a Little Too Much Patriotism for the Math

    ByAmanda Lynn

    I’ve seen church bake sales with less obvious accounting than this. Intel gets wrapped in national-strategy language, the market gets a little thrill, and suddenly everybody is acting like the money arrived by pure coincidence and good manners.

    Maybe it’s all perfectly aboveboard. Maybe it’s just the old American miracle where timing is always innocent right up until it becomes profitable. But when public backing, private upside, and a fast-moving chart all show up in the same room, you don’t need a conspiracy theory. You need a calculator and the patience to watch who keeps reaching for it.

End of content

End of content