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upstart writes:

Trump threatens taxes, bans, for nations that tax Big Tech:

Trump took to Truth Social on Monday evening to declare "As the President of the United States, I will stand up to Countries that attack our incredible American Tech Companies."

"Digital Taxes, Digital Services Legislation, and Digital Markets Regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American Technology. They also, outrageously, give a complete pass to China's largest Tech Companies," he added.

"This must end, and NOW!" his post continued, before promising "substantial additional Tariffs" on any nation that dares to persist with regulations, plus "Export restrictions on our Highly Protected Technology and Chips."

"America, and American Technology Companies, are neither the 'piggy bank' nor the 'doormat' of the World any longer," he added, before wrapping things up with a demand to "Show respect to America and our amazing Tech Companies or, consider the consequences!"

The post makes no mention of the following known facts about American Big tech companies:

• Most are extraordinarily profitable;
• Most use legal-but-cynical schemes to minimize tax, which is why many nations devised digital services taxes and other measures to ensure Big Tech pays its share;
• The USA pulled out of the OECD's comprehensive tax reforms, which aimed to prevent global companies – especially tech companies – from using legal-but-cynical schemes to minimize tax. Doing so meant other nations who wanted to tax Big Tech needed to consider other measures;
• Several American tech companies are proven monopolists who abused market power at home and abroad;
• Several offer services known to be harmful – especially social media companies – creating problems that other nations must pay to fix;
• Chinese companies do not get a free pass: Many nations have regulated them with acts such as banning Huawei. Europe just took a swipe at AliExpress. We could go on but you get the idea;
• Trump himself has given Chinese company ByteDance and its social network TikTok a free pass by declining to enact a law that required it to divest its US operations or shut up shop stateside by January 19th, 2025. US Congress passed that law after finding TikTok is a threat to national security.

We could go on, but you get the idea. America's tech companies are immensely powerful, efforts to rein them in have seldom succeeded, and China does not get a free pass.

Trump has made threats like this before, but this time he has raised the stakes by adding the prospect of tech export bans.

Such bans would likely harm other US tech companies. Chipmakers aren't subject to digital services taxes, and lost billions when the administration banned sales of all GPUs to China. A comprehensive tech export ban could defend Google and Meta by hurting Intel – which the USA now partially owns – and the likes of Nvidia and AMD.

Recent history suggests two possible outcomes: The world will try to negotiate with Washington about this matter and end up making modest concessions the president claims as a win, or nothing happens because Trump's posts are often thought bubbles.

Original Submission

day of the dalek writes:

Per Bloomberg (Alternate sources: CNBC and Reuters), the Trump Administration is weighing the US government potentially buying a stake in Intel. As CNBC reports:

Intel is the only U.S. company with the capability to manufacture the fastest chips on U.S. shores, although rivals including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung also have U.S. factories. President Donald Trump has called for more chips and high technology to be manufactured in the U.S.

The government's stake would help fund factories that Intel is currently building in Ohio, according to the report.

This comes a week after Donald Trump called for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign. While the reason behind Trump's call for Tan's resignation was not entirely clear, it is believed that it was due to Tan's investments in Chinese businesses. From CBS:

"The CEO of Intel is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately," Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social, without providing additional details. "There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!"

The president's call for Tan's resignation comes after Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, sent a letter to Intel Chairman Frank Yeary on Tuesday expressing concern over Tan's investments and ties to Chinese businesses.

"Mr. Tan reportedly controls dozens of Chinese companies and has a stake in hundreds of Chinese advanced-manufacturing and chip firms," Cotton wrote in the letter. "At least eight of these companies reportedly have ties to the Chinese People's Liberation Army."

Tan is an American citizen who was born in Malaysia, spent his youth in Singapore, and attended graduate school at MIT where he received a degree in nuclear engineering. Despite the comments about Tan last week, Trump's position on Tan remaining CEO of Intel seemed to soften earlier this week following a meeting between them (Alternate sources: AP and CNBC). From the New York Times article:

After the afternoon meeting at the White House, Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social that his discussion with Mr. Tan "was a very interesting one," though he did not elaborate. Mr. Trump said that Mr. Tan and cabinet members would meet next week and "bring suggestions to me," adding that the Intel chief's "success and rise is an amazing story."

Mr. Trump's post appeared to signal that he was changing his mind about any national security risk posed by Mr. Tan, 65, who became Intel's chief executive in March. Mr. Trump's call last week for Mr. Tan to resign, citing his past investments in Chinese companies, was one of the first times the president had attempted to directly intervene to change the leadership at a major publicly traded company.

The report that the Trump Administration is considering purchasing a stake in Intel seems to be a continuation of Trump's change in attitude toward the company and its CEO. In response to the Bloomberg report, Intel's stock surged 7% on Thursday. This is a developing story, and the White House has not yet commented.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Trump caving on Nvidia H20 export curbs may disrupt his bigger trade war:

The next front in Donald Trump's trade war will be chip tariffs—which could come by next month—but national security experts are warning that the president may have already made a huge misstep that threatens to disrupt both US trade and national security.

In a letter Monday to Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, 20 policymakers and professionals with a background in national security policy urged Trump to reverse course and block exports of Nvidia's H20 chips to China.

In April, the Trump administration decided against imposing additional export curbs on H20 chips after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang paid $1 million for a seat at a Mar-a-Lago dinner, NPR reported. Apparently, Nvidia's promise to invest $500 billion in AI data centers helped persuade Trump to change course, as did the terms of a temporary truce with China, in which the US promised to halt H20 chip controls in exchange for China restoring imports of rare earth minerals into the US.

In their letter, national security experts expressed "deep concern" that Trump may not have considered how Nvidia's H20 chips could endanger the US military's "edge in artificial intelligence" while serving as a "potent accelerator of China's frontier AI capabilities."

While these chips can't be used for AI training like the Blackwell and H100 chips still restricted by export curbs, they're "optimized for inference, the process responsible for the dramatic capabilities gains made by the latest generation of frontier AI reasoning models," experts warned.

Most likely, China will use the chips for AI models deployed by its military to "enable autonomous weapons systems, intelligence surveillance platforms, and rapid advances in battlefield decision-making," experts said. In that way, "by supplying China with these chips, we are fueling the very infrastructure that will be used to modernize and expand the Chinese military," they warned.

The Trump administration is notably investigating how chip tariffs and imports could harm national security, with a report due out in two weeks, Lutnick announced today. That report will supposedly help Trump determine if relying too much on other countries for chips poses a national security threat.

But experts seem to fear that Trump isn't paying enough attention to how exports of US technology could threaten to not only supercharge China's military and AI capabilities but also drain supplies that US firms need to keep the US at the forefront of AI innovation.

"More chips for China means fewer chips for the US," experts said, noting that "China's biggest tech firms, including Tencent, ByteDance, and Alibaba," have spent $16 billion on bulk-ordered H20 chips over the past year.

Meanwhile, "projected data center demand from the US power market would require 90 percent of global chip supply through 2030, an unlikely scenario even without China joining the rush to buy advanced AI chips," experts said. If Trump doesn't intervene, one of America's biggest AI rivals could even end up driving up costs of AI chips for US firms, they warned.

"We urge you to reverse course," the letter concluded. "This is not a question of trade. It is a question of national security."

USA bombs Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan
US President Donald Trump says American forces have conducted "very successful" strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan and that all US planes are now out of Iranian airspace.

Trump's Truth Social
"We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter."

[Updated 22 Jun 1313z - following statements by Secretary of Defence and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--JR]

Operation Midnight Hammer

75 x TLAMs - Precision Guided Weapons (PGW), 14 x MOPs GBU-57 used by 7 B2s, operational feint by sending 6 x B2s westward into the Pacific area, 7 x B2s continued eastwards. The B2s are still airborne and were observed refuelling over the Azores a few hours ago on FlightRadar24 (at least 18 tanker aircraft operating racetracks but the B2s were still radio silent). TLAMs were also fired by USN assets in the southern Persian Gulf. Over 120 aircraft involved in the mission including F16, F22, F35, ISTAR, AAR. Battle damage assessment will take time to collect and analyse.

US forces involved in the attack were not engaged and appear to have achieved total surprise. All assets are accounted for but some are still airborne.

Original Submission