[HN Gopher] A message from Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to all company e...
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A message from Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to all company employees
Author : rntn
Score : 90 points
Date : 2025-08-08 17:48 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsroom.intel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsroom.intel.com)
| rwmj wrote:
| Does he write this ridiculous verbiage himself or does he have a
| team of people who "hone" it to this point? This could have been
| a four sentence email.
| rco8786 wrote:
| He's the CEO of a multi billion dollar company of course he has
| a comms team.
| Alupis wrote:
| Some context is available here: https://apnews.com/article/intel-
| trump-cotton-yeary-tan-2061...
|
| FTA:
|
| "In March 2025, Intel appointed Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO,"
| Cotton wrote in the letter. "Mr. Tan reportedly controls dozens
| of Chinese companies and has a stake in hundreds of Chinese
| advanced-manufacturing and chip firms. At least eight of these
| companies reportedly have ties to the Chinese People's Liberation
| Army."
| everfrustrated wrote:
| If true, questions should also be raised about the Board who
| must have signed off on any conflicts of interest.
| tiahura wrote:
| This is entirely on the board. They didn't know / They didn't
| clear first with govt. Either way it's grossly negligent.
| threatripper wrote:
| Nobody really knows if 18a is a failure or if it was turned
| into one by deliberate mismanagement. It feels like when
| Microsoft took over Nokia.
| tlogan wrote:
| > If true ...
|
| I don't know about his investments, but one fact is clear: he
| was CEO of Cadence Design Systems, which has just pleaded
| guilty to federal charges for exporting technology to China.
| That alone should make him ineligible to lead a company with
| major government contracts.
|
| If he resigns (and he will), the board should go with him.
| dangus wrote:
| If I was an Intel shareholder I would be livid.
|
| Can you imagine the look you'd get if it was 1998 and you
| told me that AMD would have over twice the market
| capitalization of Intel in the next few decades? In 1998
| Intel was 50x larger by market cap than AMD.
|
| It is a company that has been catastrophically mismanaged.
| hedgehog wrote:
| Livid about the problem or livid that they're talking
| about axing the first CEO in decades that might have a
| shot at fixing the problems?
| everfrustrated wrote:
| If Tan resigns I suspect only way Pat would come back is
| with an entirely now board, so either way it's likely the
| board is done.
| jjcm wrote:
| It's honestly wild that a sitting US president is calling out
| specific company CEOs. The fact that it was done in a tweet-esque
| post is even more concerning. I'd expect that something like this
| would have been accompanied by a proper investigation and writeup
| stating the administration's perspective on why, but instead it's
| just "he's highly CONFLICTED".
|
| I don't debate his history at Cadence Design is concerning from a
| national security point of view, but the approach the
| administration took really shows how we're in a different era of
| politics.
| tptacek wrote:
| Eh. Without getting anywhere near the merits of this particular
| fracas, the federal government has gotten deeply involved in
| critiquing the management of companies like Lockheed and
| Boeing, both for national security reasons and because of the
| importance of those companies to the economy. Easy to see Intel
| fitting into that mold in 2025.
| rco8786 wrote:
| I don't recall a sitting President publicly calling for the
| CEO of either of those companies to resign.
|
| Please let's not sanewash what is happening right now.
| bgwalter wrote:
| President Obama:
|
| https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/gm-ceo-resigns-at-
| oba...
|
| Sen. Warren:
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/embroiled-scandal-
| wells...
| rco8786 wrote:
| These are news reports after the fact. It's not normal
| for a president to go on twitter and publicly deride
| someone into resigning.
| tptacek wrote:
| The norm that's been transgressed here is getting more
| and more specific, isn't it?
| rco8786 wrote:
| > a sitting President publicly calling for the CEO of
| either of those companies to resign.
|
| That was my original "norm" I stated. What has gotten
| more specific about that?
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| Publicly or privately, why is one fine and the other not?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The other hopefully happens after the President and his
| advisors talk behind the scenes. This isn't a Republican
| vs Democrat thing. Republican presidents never did this
| before.
|
| And that happened as part of the government bailing GM
| out.
| rco8786 wrote:
| I'll answer this in earnest, assuming you're asking in
| good faith.
|
| The president commands an enormous amount of power, and
| has an army of people who will do his bidding and simply
| adopt his opinions on any number of subjects. Shouting
| out to millions of his followers to state that the CEO of
| a private company is "CONFLICTED" and must resign is, by
| any definition, propaganda. Propaganda that changes the
| minds of the citizens of the country, riles up the base,
| and does nothing productive except to stoke anger and
| fear.
|
| Working privately with this CEO, having a professional
| discussion with him, investigating the facts, determining
| that the best course of action for national security
| would be for him to step down, and maybe even putting
| some political pressure on that person to do so, and then
| publicly announcing the facts of what happened, is
| responsible governance.
|
| It's genuinely an enormous difference.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| I am asking in good faith and I understand why there
| would be a preference towards private versus public. It
| sounds like Trump does not care to attempt a private
| conversation as he wants Tan out. The Cadence settlement
| is likely the only public info we have about Tan's
| conflicts, the government has more info and they aren't
| going to spend time working through private channels,
| though it sounds like Tan is trying that now.
| bgwalter wrote:
| The CEO will likely be fine, Trump also announces
| movements of nuclear submarines on Truth Social.
|
| I'd be more concerned about non-public dealings that
| Trump might have learned from Roy Cohn, but these are
| probably off limits for discussion here. In general, what
| is on Truth Social does not matter.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| The GM CEO had presided over a time when GM got into such
| bad shape they needed a government bailout, and had to
| come back asking for even more government money.
|
| The Wells Fargo CEO presided over a major scandal
| involving customers being signed up for services they
| never agreed to.
|
| What has the Intel CEO presided over during his short
| tenure that measures up to those?
| tptacek wrote:
| Vastly increased attention on semiconductor companies as
| national security assets coupled with fairly extensive
| business relationships with companies controlled by
| America's chief geopolitical rival.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Oh, so not the same kind of thing at all then...
| tptacek wrote:
| You'll notice that none of the examples on this thread
| are the same things.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Yeah, it seems like a lot of hot air to prop up a false
| equivalency.
| tptacek wrote:
| I suggest not asking questions you don't want the answers
| to.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| I suggest not normalizing Trump's behaviors by creating
| false equivalencies.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm interested in what's actually happening, not how it
| feeds the narrative about Trump. We saw the same thing
| yesterday with a dozen people on HN het up about how the
| Library of Congress Annotated Constitution had removed
| Habeas from its online copy of the Constitution (along
| with the Navy, letters of marque and reprisal, and the No
| Favored Ports clause) and people said the same thing
| there: stop claiming this was just a website fuckup and
| normalizing Trump!
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Yes, what actually happened is important.
|
| In that Constitution story, a government website that has
| the Constitution's text was updated in a peculiar way. It
| could be interpreted as having been related to habeas
| corpus rights, as that was in the middle of the removal.
| It could also be interpreted as unintentional, as the
| deletion started in the middle of Article I Section 8.
| You'd think a targeted deletion wouldn't include so much
| unrelated text. Then again, you could say that it's just
| an incompetently done targeted deletion. It's debatable!
| Maybe it was intentional and maybe the order came from
| the top. Or maybe it was just a run of the mill tech
| SNAFU.
|
| In this situation, Trump, on Trump's social media
| platform, posted that he wants this CEO to resign. That's
| not debatable, it's verifiable fact. It happened. We know
| the man at the top is saying this.
|
| So yeah, stop with the false equivalencies and pay
| attention to what's actually happening.
| tptacek wrote:
| Just so we're clear that you apparently still think it's
| possible that an order came down from the top to delete
| Congress's authorization to form a Navy from the Library
| of Congress's online annotated Constitution, which isn't
| even in the first SERP for me on Google for "online
| constitution", but I guess you've gotta start somewhere.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| C'mon, surely you should know better by now to not give
| the current admin literally any iota of doubt. They've
| been frequently and outright violating individuals habeas
| corpus rights, it should come as no surprise that people
| would see this as the next step. They're the most
| powerful people in the world.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's exactly because I think this is the most dangerous
| President in American history that I find these kinds of
| claims so risible and worth knocking down.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Dude, he altered a weather map with a Sharpie on live TV.
| tptacek wrote:
| The theory behind this Constitution thing is as if, after
| altering the weather map, _the weather changed_.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Well, it would have if he had been allowed to use nuclear
| weapons on the hurricane instead of just a Sharpie.
| antonvs wrote:
| People are interested in valid answers, not gaslighting.
| morkalork wrote:
| Lockheed's CEO Carl Kotchian resigned after political
| pressure but he brought it on himself.
| joules77 wrote:
| Look up the Teddy Roosevelt era. Before his election and
| after he leaves.
| gibbitz wrote:
| Meh, Trump wants someone as loyal and willing to spy on us as
| he thinks this guy was for China. I love how the right detests
| regulation but is okay with arbitrarily monkeying directly in
| the management of a company like this with no rules around it.
| No company is safe under this guy.
| dkenyser wrote:
| Correction: The right detests regulation on the things they
| like at that given moment.
|
| If it doesn't affect them directly, or they can't perceive
| how it will affect them directly, they simply do not care.
| goatlover wrote:
| The MAGA right has demonstrated they have no principles
| other than whatever Trump wants at that given moment. We'll
| see whether the Epstein files is truly an exception to
| that.
| cnst wrote:
| Like this?
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/qwest-ceo-nsa-punished...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6033113
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Stupid flamebait.
|
| Not a sitting president and the NSA doesn't need a warrant
| for foreign targets.
| simoncion wrote:
| > [T]he NSA doesn't need a warrant for foreign targets.
|
| That is correct. IIRC, FISA made that the law of the land
| since like the 1970s. However, Congress felt the need to
| provide _retroactive_ immunity to the telcos who assisted
| in the FISA-violating wiretaps that the NSA demanded of
| them around the turn of the century. See Title II on
| printed page 32 of this [0] for more information, and check
| out newspaper coverage about the "FISA Amendments Act of
| 2008" around July, 2008.
|
| This grant of retroactive immunity was particularly
| outrageous because it mooted in-progress civil suits
| against those telcos, which is not something that's
| supposed to be done at scale... _especially_ for civil
| liberties violations.
|
| That's a _really_ odd thing to do if no law was violated,
| don 't you think?
|
| [0] <https://web.archive.org/web/20101207052813/http://frwe
| bgate....>, found via following the chain of [1] -> [2]
| (because THOMAS is down today) -> [3]
|
| [1] the July 9th, 2008 entry here:
| <https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline>
|
| [2] <https://web.archive.org/web/20101209001911/http://thom
| as.loc...>
|
| [3] The PDF here of version 4 of the bill, because
| archive.org doesn't have the text version archived. <https:
| //web.archive.org/web/20101207012221/http://thomas.loc...>
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/gm-ceo-resigns-at-
| oba...
| xpe wrote:
| Don't forget the context:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_financial_crisis
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Like what?
| fundad wrote:
| They may have dropped the name China Initiative but all this
| tough talk on China (and immigration) primes the public to
| believe the worst.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/business-china-asia-beijing-race-...
| tgma wrote:
| This administration (and the previous one) have been paying
| billions of dollars to chip companies to make fabs in the
| United States.
|
| Trump in particular is essentially trying to make sure Intel
| lives despite market forces. It is effectively a quasi-
| nationalized entity akin to major military-industrial complex
| entities.
|
| Given that, we are not talking about a random private entity. A
| US President making such statement _about Intel_ is entirely
| justified.
| parker-3461 wrote:
| Additional context in https://www.reuters.com/world/china/trump-
| demands-highly-con...
| michaelteter wrote:
| "The administration" does not deal in facts. It only works with
| themes and phrases that (fail to) give the small, unrecognized
| boy a sense of value.
|
| If ever there were a case for the cost of lack of therapy, we are
| now witnessing it on a global, possibly catastrophic scale.
|
| Just imagine if Hitler had been placed in charge of a superpower
| with our resources...
|
| To be clear, we should not ignore the absolute reality that China
| and other powers are using every means available to influence
| global reality. But that is unrelated to the absurdity which we
| are now subject to.
|
| The invisibility of Bush is the strongest indication that "the
| party of Reagan" is completely baffled and hiding from the
| monster that they and Rupert Murdoch created.
| hinkley wrote:
| Therapists don't know how to fix narcissists. And narcissists
| don't want to be fixed.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| This guy might be the last CEO of Intel.
| soganess wrote:
| I don't really understand this.
|
| Intel was (and arguably still is) too large relative to its
| current technical capabilities. Yet even in this current "bad
| chips" era, Intel is only, at worst, about 10% behind in gaming
| performance (largely due to cache disparity) and is on par or
| better in most other workloads. From the K10 era until Zen 3,
| AMD processors were objectively worse (sometimes comically so)
| and AMD still managed to survive.
|
| Intel's mobile CPUs remain extremely competitive. Their
| integrated GPUs are the fastest in the x86 space. And their
| SoC+platform features: video decode/encode, NPUs, power
| management, wifi, and so on are the best in class for x86 CPUs;
| they are usually a solid second place or better regardless of
| architecture.
|
| Subjectively, the most interesting "mainstream" laptops on the
| market are still, and historically have been, Intel-based. I
| understand that in an era where the M4 Max, Snapdragon 8 Elite,
| and Strix Halo each serve as best-in-class in different
| segments, "mainstream appeal" no longer equates to market
| dominance. And that is bad news for an Intel that historically
| just make a few CPUs (the rest being market segmented down
| versions of those chips), but still, to suggest they will
| disappear overnight seems... odd.
| threatripper wrote:
| In the past AMD needed to survive for antitrust reasons. Now
| x86 is losing in relevance now as alternatives are
| established. Nobody needs to keep intel alive.
| deaddodo wrote:
| AMD also received many Hail Marys as a result of Intel's
| anticompetitive behavior. Directly via payouts Intel and
| partners had to make, and indirectly via companies being
| more willing to work with them for their GPU expertise and
| better (out of desperation) licensing/purchase agreements.
|
| Intel can't rely on the same. They haven't been directly
| impacted by another larger company, they rely too much on a
| single technology that's slowly fading from the spotlight,
| and they can't compete against AMD on price.
|
| Maybe if they ended up in a small and lean desperation
| position they could pivot and survive, but their current
| business model is a losing eventuality.
| chrsw wrote:
| "last CEO" is hyperbole. But despite the competitiveness of
| some of their latest offerings, their trajectory is beyond
| concerning.
| tgma wrote:
| > Intel was (and arguably still is) too large relative to its
| current technical capabilities. Yet even in this current "bad
| chips" era, Intel is only, at worst, about 10% behind in
| gaming performance (largely due to cache disparity) and is on
| par or better in most other workloads. From the K10 era until
| Zen 3, AMD processors were objectively worse (sometimes
| comically so) and AMD still managed to survive.
|
| The current "bad chips that are only 10% behind" are fabbed
| by TSMC, not Intel.
| getnormality wrote:
| Lots of en dashes.
| xdennis wrote:
| They looked too short to be em dashes and too long to be en
| dashes. Sure enough, they're neither.
|
| They're minus signs. The AI is evolving.
| hinkley wrote:
| Sigh. Guess I'm going back to using way too many commas and
| living in fear of misusing semicolons.
|
| This is why we can't have nice things.
| number6 wrote:
| I love semicolons and dashes. AI won't take them from me!
| threatripper wrote:
| Must be a force of habit.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| What are the odds this ends with Intel getting nationalized? I
| think it's really looking kind of non-zero now.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It doesn't need to get officially nationalized. Trump is
| already using tariffs to essentially direct large businesses.
| It's already been reported that Trump is requiring TSMC to take
| a 49% stake in Intel for tariff relief.
| Dr4kn wrote:
| Why would TSMC do this? Companies want the best chips and
| they can only get them from TSMC. If there isn't an
| alternative and building the necessary infrastructure in the
| US takes too long the Tarif is useless.
| emchammer wrote:
| Thank god Apple has been putting their eggs in their home-woven
| ARM basket. Now I just wish that they had a CEO who was above
| golden-trophy ass-kissing.
| tengwar2 wrote:
| Partly home-made. Arm Holdings is British-based, but owned by
| Softbank Group (Japanese).
| gdiamos wrote:
| Arm makes a specification and standard (the ARM ISA).
|
| Apple licenses that and develops their own chip, which is
| then manufactured by TSMC.
|
| So I guess if Intel dies the US will still have a few good
| CPU design firms, but no manufacturing
|
| Also note that Foxconn (China) assembles the iPhones
|
| Eg https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-factory-
| foxconn...
| deaddodo wrote:
| ARM also produces core reference implementations. Most
| ARM licensees' licenses only allow them to use those in a
| slightly modified form.
|
| What you're talking about is an ARM IP license, which
| allow the company to build their own implementation of
| the standard. Only a few companies have those and, of
| those, even fewer actually use it. Apple is one of those
| that does.
| landl0rd wrote:
| Apple still holds the license to the arm arches/designs
| they've used. There's enough customization applied that I'd
| guess Apple could function absent ARM, even if it's not the
| ideal scenario for them.
|
| Plus Britain and Japan are both somewhere between close
| allies and client states. Nobody cares if we license from
| them.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Apple is also not a regular ARM licensee. They have a
| special deal because they were a very early investor when
| they wanted a chip to power the Newton back in the day.
| deaddodo wrote:
| No they don't. I mean, that is _why_ they have that
| license (though PA Semi, the company they absorbed that
| develops their cores, also brought one along with them);
| but it's not a special or unique license. Nvidia,
| Qualcomm, AMD, etc all have the same license.
|
| Apple is near unique only in that they've pretty much
| never used reference implementations (since the PA Semi
| acquisition, at least) from ARM and stick to their pure
| bespoke microarchitectures. But they're not the only
| company that _could_.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Japan is our ally.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Not much longer if we continue as we do.
| blooalien wrote:
| We still have allies?
| pphysch wrote:
| More importantly, we militarily occupy Japan.
| hinkley wrote:
| Amd64 has other vendors.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I hate everything that Cook is doing to kiss up to Trump and
| he did something similar during the first administration by
| letting Trump brag about final assembly of low selling Mac
| Pros was happening in the US.
|
| But this is the country that the US wants (said as a born and
| bred US citizen) these are the results of it. Every CEO is
| kissing Trumps ass because that's the only way you get ahead
| in the US now.
|
| The media, the other two branches, colleges, tech companies
| etc have all bent a knee and bribed the President in one way
| or the other.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The fact he allowed Tim Apple to just hang out there was
| telling
| dylan604 wrote:
| Does it being "designed in California" but "made in Taiwan"
| really make a difference? If Taiwan was to be invaded and
| TSMC follows through with their threat of destroying all of
| the fabs, Apple's home-woven basket wouldn't be worth much at
| all
| seszett wrote:
| If the US or the Netherlands were being invaded that world
| also wreak havoc, but how is that related to the links
| between China and Intel's CEO?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Invading the US or Netherlands would not impact chip
| production. How are you not able to grasp that?
| nerdsniper wrote:
| Besides missing the point, this is a bad argument.
|
| ASML manufactures the machines that TSMC uses to produce
| chips - they have an even more critical and irreplaceable
| role in chip production than Taiwan does. ASML is
| headquartered in Veldhoven, NL. That would absolutely
| affect chip production - no new nodes, no replacement
| parts. There are other critical technologies for
| semiconductor manufacturing made in USA as well.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| They are partially made in San Diego.
| gjvc wrote:
| who buys intel instead of AMD at this point?
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Swing traders. Also those who think China-Taiwan conflict is
| imminent.
| nodesocket wrote:
| I own both, though admittedly Intel has not panned out so far.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| It can't be AMD, two separate companies need to exist for dual-
| sourcing reasons. Market cap is $86.5B ATM, so there's quite a
| few who could afford them.
| ac29 wrote:
| A lot of people?
|
| Intel, even in its current weakened state, did nearly double
| the revenue of AMD last quarter.
| dlyco wrote:
| First, you need to know the emotional bond between Chinese
| Malaysians and the Chinese Communist Party, before you can say
| his actions are not suspicious.
| acheong08 wrote:
| That is just factually incorrect. Most Chinese Malaysians are
| either Cantonese or Hokkien, with closer ties to Taiwan and
| Hong Kong than the mainland. A lot of the older folk don't even
| speak Mandarin. Keep in mind the CCP wasn't even in power when
| most migrated here.
| tlogan wrote:
| The key question is this: how did the board of directors hire him
| knowing he had been subpoenaed to testify regarding Cadence
| Design Systems, and that the company has now agreed to plead
| guilty.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| The biggest problem with Lip Bu Tan is he has given up on
| competing with Nvidia.
|
| What's the point of being Intel CEO if you give up?
|
| He should resign.
| newAccount2025 wrote:
| Can they win?
| nont wrote:
| That is not as important as if they want to win.
| sugarpimpdorsey wrote:
| Well that was a whole lot of words that conveyed basically no
| information.
|
| A sort of corporate communications-whitewashed version of the _My
| Cousin Vinny_ "Everything that guy just said is bullshit. Thank
| you."
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| So now being a bad CEO who is not of European ethnicity, will
| have the sitting president insinuate you not so subtly for
| treason. Wild. A cursory Wikipedia search confirms Tan was born
| in Malaysia, has lived in US for 40+ years in California, and is
| a practicing Christian.
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