In an apparent attempt to prove that stupidity is a bipartisan trait, the current administration has decided to force Taiwan to acquire a 49% interest in Intel. The U.S. government thinks that the survival of Intel is essential to the national interest and is using the threat of tariffs to force the Taiwanese chip manufacturing sector to essentially merge with Intel.
They have some precedent. A little more than 25 years ago, the Clinton administration decided that McDonald Douglas was in trouble but needed to survive so they pressured Boeing into merging with them. We all know the result of that. The suits from the failing McDonald Douglas captured control of the new company and destroyed the engineering culture that had made Boeing the apotheosis of aeronautical manufacturing. What happened next was that planes started falling from the sky.
If Intel is failing it’s because they’ve made some bad decisions not because they need some new patsy’s money. Extorting money from Taiwan will probably do little to solve Intel’s problems and it could, as with Boeing, contribute to the failure of both Intel and the Taiwanese chip industry. I’m pretty sure that that wouldn’t be in the U.S. national interest either.
Government meddling in engineering is even worse than management doing so. It almost always ends in tears and the purported benefits never seem to appear. It’s practically a cliche that government attempts to pick winners and losers never achieve anything but grief. But, it seems, we never learn.