Trump can't quickly or easily kill the CHIPS Act, but he can fire the workers funded by it US President Donald Trump has made it plain he’s not a fan of the $53 billion CHIPS and Science Act that funds semiconductor manufacturing and research on American soil – and now it appears he’s decided to make substantial staff cuts at the agencies that administer it. Reports in Axios and Bloomberg claim that almost 500 staff …
I guess they in fact are are: Destroy the technological lead America has worked out over the past decades.
Plus, destroy social services, destroy freedom of speech ( for everyone but right-wing nuts ) , destroy rule of law , etc.
Just what shall replace everything that gets destroyed right now is not clear, but I'm not so sure there is a plan at all.
They won't be replaced. Consider Russia as a model for a future Trumpland: the peasants are kept poor, dumb and docile; religion becomes intertwined with politics so that the king is routinely acclaimed as the choice of all Merkins.
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Don't know why you stroke through the word "king", that's how he sees himself
https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-donald-trump-king-time-2033574
It's also worth noting this sentence in the article:-
The layoffs are also expected to gut the US AI Safety Institute, which was responsible for evaluating the security of emerging AI models.
To which one could reasonably append "such as Tesla's full self driving and Elon Musks startup" if they were feeling sufficiently cynical.
> To which one could reasonably append "such as Tesla's full self driving and Elon Musks startup" if they were feeling sufficiently cynical.
I'm not at all certain it is possible to be sufficiently cynical about what Trump, and the fascists behind him are doing and are going to do. There is not a single backbone among the national-level Republicans put together. They will never meaningfully oppose the éminences grise who give them their own illusion of power, and they will continue to support the destruction and chaos up until the very second they discover that they are also scheduled to be victims, rather than the new permanent ruling class.
I think it's going to be ugly. Good luck out there.
Putin is the king of social media. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: "Propaganda must always address itself to.. not persons who are able to form reasoned judgement.. but human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another."
Trump owes Putin his election. So he will probably need Putin again and therefore for Putin to stay in power too.
The only thing both of them are interested is Power. Not money per se.
I don't think poor old Donald is very clear about anything any more, which is is why he does little except post infantile tweets ("My opponents are NASTY people. SAD!") and sign executive orders about drinking straws.
Musk is in charge now - essentially the roles of Head of Government and Head of State, previously both invested in the President, are split, and Musk is Head of Government.
Musk is keeping Trump happy by giving him fun stuff to do - flying over Daytona racetrack, "racing" his Presidential limo around the track, having dessert at 3PM like a little kid in a sweet shop. Whilst Musk keeps in the background, controlling which Presidential Orders are written and what they say, firing people, telling the cabinet and VP what to do and how to do it etc.
So Trump gets treated like a King and thinks he's in charge, but Elon is the one doing the execution.
This is vintage Trump.
1. Impose tariffs on imported chips, claiming it will help to fix the US economy.
2. Summarily kill the funding allocated by Congress to improving and expanding domestic chip technology R&D and manufacturing.
3. Blame the resulting disasterous effects on Biden.
4. Rins and repeat.
This sort of decisive governance will make America great again! Yeah, right.
But are there actually any plans or it's just mood-swinging political action?
I really hope, for the sake of USA and the whole world, that there is actually no plan and it's just a headless-chicken management.
Because if all this shit follows a plan, the target it aims for, whichever is it, won't be good at all.
The supreme leader will do as putin pleases. If it benefits China, it will be done. He will wield the power of satan to tear the world to the ground and envelope it in darkness. Nothing can stop that now. Everything will burn. He has no choice. He has aligned himself with pure evil. Stop disbelieving your own eyes and ears. Quit telling yourself "it's not real, this can't be happening", when all he has done and is doing is horror, and venom, and inhumanity. When all his silver tongue says is lies, and all his actions are sin, and devil worship. A true serpent of the dark father. He will destroy without conscience. He will eat the flesh from the innocent. The death and blood that he leaves as a trail will stain the earth. God will have to burn all to ash to cleanse it.
Yeah, can't wait to see what new awe-inspiring crisis the Orange Chef of Domestic Terrorism will pull out of his smoking frog soup inferno ass to celebrate the 30ᵗʰ anniversary of the gutting of the Federal Government this April, with satanic rituals, danse trance, and further deep cuts and blood sacrifices of virgins and children.
With such an accomplished evildoer right smack in the Offal Orifice, who needs enemas?!
One of the reasons there is nothing approaching a united European response is that voters across Europe have already been choosing Trump-lite candidates. The interesting test will be the upcoming German elections: will the fondness of the Trump administration for the AfD turn out to be a liability after his most recent statements or an asset?
In the meantime, there is an increasingly likelihood that the supply of technology will be one of the least of our near-term concerns.
If the current administrations of various countries weren't utterly useless this would not be a thing. The EU is incapable of presenting a united front due to deeply held regional and national differences coupled with an elite ruling class that is drifting further into the stratosphere. Germany has been cosying up to Russia for DECADES and Europe did absolutely naff all in the runup to the Crimea annexation in 2014 and remained doing naff all until 2022 when Macron and Sholz each tried to negotiate with Russia without involving Ukraine as the subsequent loss of cheap Russian fossil fuels has now put Germany into a multi-year recession. For all Macron's talk now he was very anti any support for Ukraine for almost 2 years.
In the UK we now see Starmer following in the footsteps of the great Saint Blair by promising to send UK troops to a forever war.
Most terrific! The front page may have changed during the day ... so here is the Putin Poodle article link (front page shown about 1/3 down) and a direct link to the jpg (just too beautiful to pass!) ...
Wait until he hears about the trans-istors that come into the US, smuggled inside the "chip packaging"[1].
Not to mention how many of them are bi-polar (although some of those also identify as hetero-junction as well, which is very confusing).
Then there is all the tunneling these things get up to once they are powered up inside the US borders...
[1] crisp packaging to rightpondians.
Right smack on! Same monkey-brain logic with governement efficiency ... he claims to "want" it, but then appoints limp DOGE biscuit sofa-potato brownshirts and trousers Space Karen momma's basement wanker boys to effect it. Good luck with that swindle!
Even "dumb hick" jokester JD Vance knows that Greta Thunberg would have a lot more staying power in this role (10 years) than a pissant eugenist like Marko Elez and his penetrative single day cyberintrusion. Plus she has a more energetic understanding of efficiency that's unrelated to mafia-boss vengeance and retribution!
>Rather than subsidizing the US industry, I presume the plan is to tariff imports until the US industry is competitive again
Except they are also tariffing chip making machines from Europe and blank wafers from Taiwan - probably some clever 4d chess move I am not qualified to understand
Perhaps it is simpler than that. What if even more of the CHIPS Act money can flow to TSMC, etc. by reducing the overhead? We are, after all, talking about government agencies, the most inefficient workforce on the planet. I wonder if anyone will notice, other than the poor sots losing their jobs.
"not clear" is an understatement. The Orange blob's spraying of shite in all directions is the plan. Some of it will stick, most won't. Doesn't matter anyway, he'll achieve his main goal of disruption... all the people potentially affected by this are consuming their resources deciphering the ramblings then coming up with a plan to counter, because you can't risk ignoring it. Meanwhile Blobby can go about whatever he's doing in the background.
Blobby and his crew having an opinion of semis? FFS, it's way beyond their combined IQ level. You just can't pop up a fab like a four seasons landscaping warehouse. Here's to Europe with U.K. taking a continued technical lead over the Muppet farm.
He is prone to magical thinking. He thinks that if he puts tariffs on imports, American industry will be able to quickly pivot and manufacture them in the USA for the same or less than the import + tariff cost.
Except, he has no actual knowledge - so it is magical thinking at its best.
The fact fabs can take a decade to come fully online, irrelevant - that's a minor detail that would never even have entered his head. Nor will the fact that the lithography tech used is imported, so could be subject to controls too...
My thought too. Why all the 'beautiful' tariffs but then axe the program that was supposed to encourage the semiconductor industry to build in the US?
Though the obvious answer is that he doesn't understand tariffs or is purposely not understanding/misrepresenting them. But I wouldn't expect an heir to billions made in the safest industry for investments, real estate, to understand anything about manufacturing. Especially when the person seems as intellectually incurious as Trump.
It was probably because your position provided IT support to research projects related to the DoE. If your hospital did research with nuclear material or a synchrotron, and if you did basic IT help with the computers involved, your wages could be partially or totally funded through research grants.
I have never handled a DoE grant; I have managed federal grants before and they typically allow for wages of support staff to be part of the expenditures. A grant that doesn't really cover the tertiary costs of the intended goal is really just wasting money. You would end up wasting $100k+ in idle workers, idle machines, and idle materials because your IT support is stretched thin, when you could have just spent 30k on a part-time or partially funded IT member who was hired to support the project.
Trump's claim was that tariffs on chip imports would mean American manufacture would increase, but this is contrary to this claim.
It's almost like he still wants the stuff to be imported and taxed at import by tariffs, so where does the tariff money eventually end up?
An organised criminal drug dealing business will produce their own products, but they will prefer to let others do the work and tax them and this seems no different. Trump in his last term did fairly dodgy financial things such as charging the secret service that protected him for rent in Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower (which also hosted political events - at a price). And these are just the ones that are openly known about. He sees Gaza and Ukraine as money making ventures for property and mining companies in the US, no doubt employing Trump family members in overseeing roles or admin companies taking a big cut.
It's like they voted for Capone.
When there's any doubt, follow the money.
About $37b goes to companies with fabs.
The rest is boondoggle and slush fund.
Actually the amount going to Intel and others is unclear, not clear if that's just the cash and much more comes in tax credits and loans, or not, or if the additional is counted in the $280b, or what.
Indeed, why does the US govt need to fund Intel's stock buyback? Intel got to where they are by being (mostly) better than the competition and now they've made some really stupid decisions and the stock price is hurting so they want handouts. Same with the US car industry.
"Indeed, why does the US govt need to fund Intel's stock buyback? Intel got to where they are by being (mostly) better than the competition and now they've made some really stupid decisions and the stock price is hurting so they want handouts. Same with the US car industry."
You're absolutely right! Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep are no longer in American hands and the rest could not survive for more than a few weeks without the steady stream of parts imported from Canada, Europe and Asia. Great! Let's do the same thing with chips and all the industry branches that rely on them! How cold that possibly be bad? Surely this can only end well!
He wants Semiconductor companies to setup shop in the US (Red States preferably) and the CHIPS act was doing that yet...
Oh wait. It was invented by Biden who did not know what he was doing (according to Herr Trumpf)
so he wants his own scheme.
That is hardly very efficient now is it? Where's DOGE when you need them?
Cue sagebush blowing down Penn Ave, DC.
We all "know" that the only way to be efficient is to let independent companies take on tasks that the gubbermint is too wishy-washy to do properly. After all, it is clearly Musk who is doing everything[1] that NASA was supposed to do
From the article TFA linked to:
> Three U.S. officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration were abruptly laid off late Thursday, with some losing access to email before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning to find they were locked out. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
> One of the hardest hit offices was the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, which saw about 30% of the cuts. Those employees work on reassembling warheads, one of the most sensitive jobs across the nuclear weapons enterprise, with the highest levels of clearance.
> The hundreds let go at NNSA were part of a DOGE purge across the Department of Energy that targeted about 2,000 employees.
*Clearly* what was intended[2] was for Musk "I probably know more about manufacturing nuclear weapons than anyone alive today"[3] to take over reassembling warheads[4], which he could then "borrow" to equip Starship[4] for his 2022 Mars colonisation flights.
[1] well, apart from all the robotics, observations, collaborations, Science, piffling little things like that.
[2] wot, me speculate?
[3] ok, ok, but you know he'd come out and say that if asked
[4] why create something if you can get it ready to assemble?
For all practical purposes, we are witnessing the end of US dominance in all things - Trump is Russia's # 1 weapon of mass distraction/destruction and China's wet dream for superpower status. And all it took was one useful idiot, some strategic trolling & a population enraptured by freak shows & social media. As George Carlin once said "It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."
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