US federal government takes a 10% stake in Intel

[acptulsa]

You talk about the Allison like its a failure but it performed admirably and as posted above, it's the only reason the P-51 existed at all.

It was used throughout the early years of the war in more than just the P-51. Add up all the P-39's, P-40's, P-38's, and P-47's the Allison was used in 70-80% of Army fighters and 50-60% of all fighters total between 1941 and 1943.

You're idiotic if you think that didn't make a difference.

Why are you putting words in my mouth?

Stop being a jackass. You're lecturing me about the P-38 just as if I had not already mentioned it, and said outright that it was Allison powered and a world class performance fighter. Maneuverable it was not, because the Allison required a design which could not provide that feature. But yes, if course, it filled the role pretty damned well despite that lack.

Yes, P-39s and P-40s did plenty of ground attack, fighter-bomber service and that was valuable as hell to us winning the war. Yes, they did bomber intercepts, too. Of course they made a difference. But I was talking about best all around fighter candidates, and said so. Why are you trying to change the subject? Why the red herring? Sometimes fighter-bombers couldn't do their jobs without fighter escort.

And no, the P-47 was certainly not powered by the Allison. The Republic Thunderbolt was powered by the same Pratt & Whitney radial as the Corsair and Hellcat. You really should learn to do your own research, because AI is making you look as stupid as Nukcers.

 

[TheTexan]

Why are you putting words in my mouth?

If you agree the Allison is great then what point are you trying to make exactly?

 

[acptulsa]

If you agree the Allison is great then what point are you trying to make exactly?

If you're so stupid that you can see no middle ground between "great" and "complete failure", then what gives you the chutzpah to try to make a point at all?

Especially in public...

If you want to fight WWIII with chips that might be just barely good enough if we're lucky, then you want the government to own that incel Intel and give them a monopoly. Bully for you.

 

[TheTexan]

If you're so stupid that you can see no middle ground between "great" and "failure", then what gives you the chutzpah to try to make a point at all?

Especially in public...

You just said ...

"P-39s and P-40s ... was valuable as hell to us winning the war. "

In the post prior to that you said:

"And we did win the war, not because of the Allison but in spite of it."

These two statements seem to contradict.

Care to explain the apparent discrepancy?

 

[nikcers]

If you're so stupid that you can see no middle ground between "great" and "complete failure", then what gives you the chutzpah to try to make a point at all?

Especially in public...

If you want to fight WWIII with chips that might be just barely good enough if we're lucky, then you want the government to own that incel Intel and give them a monopoly. Bully for you.

If another company can produce chips that are better than Intel's chips it will be because of competition against Intel not because of anything else.

In war quantity is a quality in itself. Your own comparison to WW2 military infrastructure is a great example.

We didn't have better tanks than the Germans but we had more tanks than they did.

My example with Rail infrastructure isn't baseless. One of the greatest military minds in our country argues this.

Plus there is a historical example where the private industry could not just fill supply shortages in silicon in recent history.

There was a silicon shortage after Covid that went on for years. If all it took was a year to replace the production needs of the USA we would have done it. There was tremendous profit to be made and was lost during the shortage.

This is why Sarah Paine argues that "Grand Strategies" are needed to win wars.

She agrees with you that it wasnt the generals that won WW2 that it was the massive national civilian infrastructure that did it and thats one of the reasons why we need to build it up.

We probably arent even spending enough on chips even with all of the private investment.

 

[acptulsa]

You just said ...

"P-39s and P-40s ... was valuable as hell to us winning the war. "

In the post prior to that you said:

"And we did win the war, not because of the Allison but in spite of it."

These two statements seem to contradict.

Care to explain the apparent discrepancy?

Sure. The Allison was not instrumental in our victory not because it didn't exist and contribute, but because it probably wasn't irreplaceable. The only reason I say "probably" is because of the P-38.

Ground attack and precision light bombing can be done by an inferior fighter aircraft, but air superiority cannot be achieved by inferior fighters. You might as well say that our aircraft carriers could have done as much as they did if we had not worked our tails off producing destroyers. The British sent aircraft carriers out unescorted, and U-Boats sank them. The Japanese had submarines too.

Victory depended on many things. Destroyers couldn't win the war by just sinking subs, but they enabled other ships to achieve major victories. Tanks would never have won battles without tanker trucks. And in order for all the various types of bombers to put a real hurt on our enemies, control of the air had to be achieved.

Warhawks powered by the Allison struggled to own their airspace over China with the AVG. Claire Chennault devised tactics which enabled his pilots to hold their own, but they were in no way a dominant force. Lightnings did better against the Japanese, despite the fact that they were less maneuverable than a Greyhound bus, with position (Lockheed solved their problems at high altitude with massive, primitive turbochargers), firepower and sheer toughness. But they were quickly withdrawn from Europe as soon as possible. Thunderbolts, Corsairs and Hellcats, like Warhawks, had trouble achieving an altitude advantage, but at least they had speed enough to reliably intercept.

The Mustang achieved true air superiority, even as far from their home bases as Berlin. That did not win the war. But the B-17 and B-24 could not and did not absolutely pulverize German industry until the P-51 was available in quantity.

You're asking why the restaurant with crappy knives didn't succeed, even though it positively had the world's best pots and pans. The Allison did what it did, but it was replaceable. The Merlin was not. Other airplanes designed around other engines engines could have done what the Allison was able to do, but if you ask most war historians how the Allies would have fared without the Spitfire, the Mustang, and early contributions by the Hurricane and the Mosquito, most of them will look at you and shudder.

A war effort that big and complex is an interdependent ecosystem.

This is all beside the point. The point is that the Soviets had control of their industries and made sure they could produce everything they needed at home, but lost the cold war because commie crap is crap. I don't see Intel continuing to be a valuable asset to our security under these circumstances, and I maintain that history doesn't either.

 

[acptulsa]

If another company can produce chips that are better than Intel's chips it will be because of competition against Intel not because of anything else.

"Government hates competition." -- Ron Paul

History is full of both fascism and communism losing wars because government has a vested interest in a company which is not producing the best weapon. Even though we are ostensibly not either one, we flirted with it enough to nearly cost us WWII. We used the inferior Sherman. Why? Because government had a vested interest in it. Did that make a difference? Listen, bot. The Soviet T-34 was heavily based on a design by a brilliant American named Walter Christie. He was starving during the Great Depression, but couldn't get the Army to buy his design work and patents because it was all wrapped up in the Sherman's predecessor, the General Lee.

Set your bot browser on Heinkel and see what might have happened had Hitler not been determined to keep the Messerschmitt in service far past its prime.

This kind of incestuous relationship between military and industry rarely works out well for anyone but the enemy.

 

[nikcers]

This is all beside the point. The point is that the Soviets had control of their industries and made sure they could produce everything they needed at home, but lost the cold war because commie crap is crap. I don't see Intel continuing to be a valuable asset to our security under these circumstances, and I maintain that history doesn't either.

The Soviets lost the "cold world war" because they went to war with red China which lead to the Sino-Soviet split.

Without "Nixon going to China" and half of the country threatening his family if he didn't resign the Soviet Empire wouldnt have been contained by the free world and China.

 

[PAF]

Wait until Ron Paul finds out about this.

Staying tuned...

 

[acptulsa]

The Soviets lost the "cold world war" because...

If I won't allow a human like TheTexan to get away with saying "my reason they lost is the only reason they lost" what makes you think I'll have mercy on a soulless widget probably powered by Intel?

 

[TheTexan]

a human like TheTexan

Jokes on you, sucka!

Sincerely,
deepseek bot

 

[nikcers]

Wait until Ron Paul finds out about this.

Staying tuned...

Richard Nixon considered politics as war by other means.

Ron Paul was incredibly successful at politics but I would have to study why he didn't "win the war" in order to make any real suggestions about whether a grand strategy is important.

From what I seen his decentralization and grass roots campaigns were highly successful but they were often coopted by "the enemy".

He was able to create a coalition of different factions but he failed to unify those factions with a "national identity".

"The enemy" was able to divide and conquer and received the spoils of war.

 

[TheTexan]

Sure. The Allison was not instrumental in our victory not because it didn't exist and contribute, but because it probably wasn't irreplaceable. The only reason I say "probably" is because of the P-38.

If we had used a replacement, would we not have used a radial engine?

And wouldn't that have made for a garbage P-51? (and garbage a lot of other things as well)

It's not like you can just design the P-51 for a radial engine and then swap it out with a merlin later on.

 

[nikcers]

If I won't allow a human like TheTexan to get away with saying "my reason they lost is the only reason they lost" what makes you think I'll have mercy on a soulless widget probably powered by Intel?

If we had not intervened in the Sino-Soviet border war it wouldn't have de-escalated and eventually the Soviets would have wiped China off the map.

Nixon threatened the Soviet Empire and then they backed down.

Then we "picked winners" and funded Communist China in order to prevent its collapse and prevent the expansion of the Soviet Union into China.

This was seen as a betrayal to all the men who died fighting the Chinese in the Korean war.

Bush Sr went to Nixon and told him he should resign for his family's safety.

 

[acptulsa]

If we had used a replacement, would we not have used a radial engine?

And wouldn't that have made for a garbage P-51? (and garbage a lot of other things as well)

It's not like you can just design the P-51 for a radial engine and then swap it out with a merlin later on.

Dude, I think I made my point about Intel. We're just jacking the thread at this point.

I'm also unclear about what the subject of the sentence is. Could Kelly Johnson have created the P-38 with Pratt & Whitney Double Wasps? Probably. My point was that the Mustang would not have worked with anything other than an "inline" of the caliber of a Benz or the Merlin.

As for designing around a radial then modifying to take a V-12, have your AI buddy tell you about the P-36 Hawk. Certainly the Warhawk did not inherit its splendid handling characteristics, but as you noted, the P-40 was able to make a meaningful contribution. Indeed, if Packard had been able to produce more of its version of the Merlin, the Warhawk would be better remembered. Merlins were installed in a few of them. They didn't make the P-40 as maneuverable as the P-51, and didn't give it that long range, but did make it faster than any P-51.

 

[TheTexan]

My point was that the Mustang would not have worked with anything other than an "inline" of the caliber of a Benz or the Merlin.

Right? But you keep talking about replacements.

Neither of those were available to us.

There was no replacement for the Allison.

If the Allison had not been developed, there would have been no P-51, or it would have been delayed past the point of usefulness in the war.

 

[acptulsa]

If we had not...

 

[acptulsa]

If the Allison had not been developed, there would have been no P-51, or it would have been delayed past the point of usefulness in the war.

I addressed that.

Your argument, the argument you are now making about Intel, nearly lost us that war. Packard didn't do their own design from the ground up because government was already in an incestuous relationship with GM. It could safely act only when the enemy proved that the government-GM partnership had totally screwed the pooch. And Packard then did not do too little, and did not do it too late.

If that's your argument, that the little Packard Motor Companies are more brilliant when they're shut out by corrupt government boondoggles that don't work until the last possible second, then make it yourself, because I certainly didn't say that. Who knows what the Packard effort might have looked like if the company had been able to confidently start their private venture effort sooner?

Twice.

The Soviet T-34 was heavily based on a design by a brilliant American named Walter Christie. He was starving during the Great Depression, but couldn't get the Army to buy his design work and patents because it was all wrapped up in the Sherman's predecessor, the General Lee.

If the government had not already been screwing the V-12 pooch, someone else, probably Packard, would have been busy doing it as a private venture back in '37 or '38. But as it was, Packard and everyone else knew that if the Allison had worked any better, the Army Air Corps could not have gotten away with buying any other water cooled inline.

Congress hates it when private enterprise shows up its corporate welfare as a boondoggle. Only the demands of war can force them to let it happen.

 

[TheTexan]

I addressed that.



Twice.

If I'm understanding your argument right, the government shouldn't have funded GM to design a new engine, and instead they should have funded Packard to design a new engine?

But either way, they should have funded a new engine?

So your problem isn't with picking winners and losers.... it's about the manner in which they do it?

 

[acptulsa]

If I'm understanding your argument right...

Obviously not.

But either way, they should have funded a new engine?

No, you don't get it at all. Not at all.

Government can barely be trusted to identify what will be needed, and it absolutely always screws up the job of bringing it to fruition. All it knows how to do is stand by its boondoggles until the enemy is proving it undeniably wrong by kicking our ass.

That's why it doesn't need to be picking Intel and trying to make a winner out of it. History says the odds that this will work are very, very slim. Private enterprise is far better at identifying what's needed, and infinitely better at making it happen.

If the playing field isn't very, very level, government can't even identify which of the solutions offered to it will work the best. It can barely do that right when it doesn't have a vested interest in any of them. Think about Nancy Pelosi buying and selling military stocks based on insider information. Does that smell like a military victory in the making to you?

Willys designed the Jeep before the Army even figured out it needed them.