Intel

Intel   (Big Tech, Company)
Formation	1968
Founder	Gordon Moore
Headquarters	Santa Clara, California
Interests	Monopoly, Wage slavery, Mass Surveillance?
Member of	Business Roundtable, Transatlantic Policy Network
Biggest US Tech company, its owner warned its main products would become a casus belli for WW3.

Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 series of instruction sets, the program software found in many computers.

Intel along with big tech companies ASML and TSMC dominate the worldwide market of chip manufacturing and have a monopoly using platformization and cartel agreements.

Early start

How ASML, TSMC And Intel Dominate The Chip Market - CNBC Marathon

Intel was an early developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, which accounted for the majority of its business until 1981. Intel developed the world's first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971. It wasn't until the success of the personal computer (PC) and the end of the Cold War that it became its main business. During the 1990s with the rise of Microsoft and Apple, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs, allowing the computer industry to grow rapidly. During this period, Intel became a major supplier of PC microprocessors and became known for its aggressive and anti-competitive tactics to defend its market position, especially against Advanced Micro Devices, and to compete with Microsoft for control of the direction of the PC industry. Intel quickly became the biggest supplier for chips in server supercomputers in many countries for mass surveillance, supplying the NSA, CIA and US Army.

War with China

Website Techpowerup reported that Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in an interview with CNN at the WEF Annual Meeting in 2023 Davos that semiconductor chip supply chains will have a greater influence on geopolitics than oil supply-chains over the next 50 years.

Modern civilization is increasingly digitized, and "most modern conveniences are "chipped" and connected in some form, which would put the chip-producing nations, or entities producing/supplying the chips at a distinct geopolitical advantage, similar to the oil-producing ones today. The location of "oil reserves [has] defined geopolitics for the last five decades," Gelsinger said; "where the technology supply chains are, and where semiconductors are built, is more important for the next 5 decades," he added.

Corruption

In July 2007, the European Commission accused Intel of anti-competitive practices against Taiwanese rival Advanced Micro Devices.

In September 2007, South Korean regulators accused Intel of breaking antitrust law. The investigation began in February 2006, when officials raided Intel's South Korean offices. In November 2009, following a two-year investigation, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sued Intel, accusing them of bribery and coercion, claiming that Intel bribed computer makers to buy more of their chips than those of their rivals and threatened to withdraw these payments if the computer makers were perceived as working too closely with its competitors. Intel denied everything requested by makers, from repair parts to manuals.

In 2009, Intel announced that it planned to undertake an effort to remove conflict resources—materials sourced from mines whose profits are used to fund armed militant groups, particularly within the Democratic Republic of the Congo—from its supply chain. On July 22, 2010, Dell agreed to a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to pay $100M in penalties resulting from charges that Dell did not accurately disclose accounting information to investors. In particular, the SEC charged that from 2002 to 2006, Dell had an agreement with Intel to receive rebates in exchange for not using chips manufactured by AMD.

Backdoors

Full article: Backdoor

China's nuke agency using US computer chips, semiconductors on blacklist since 1997 - WION

Foreshadow - Zombieload - RIDL - Fallout - SWAPGS - TAA

There are serious vulnerabilities in Intel computer chips since the mid-1990s:

In 2019, researchers from the VU University Amsterdam found a serious security vulnerability in commonly used processor chips made by Intel. The vulnerability makes it possible to read data processed by these computer processors. The vulnerability was present in almost all modern servers, desktops and laptops that are equipped with an Intel processor, but not in smartphones and tablets with Intel chips. If someone exploits the vulnerability, they can read all kinds of data that the processor is processing, including things like credit card details and passwords. During the 2010s, more of these backdoors continued to be found, but Intel didn't lose their big US government contracts.

Intel ME

Intel ME is a co-processor integrated in all post-2006 Intel boards, it is the base hardware for many Intel features like Intel AMT, Intel Boot Guard, Intel PAVP and many others. To provide these features, it requires full access to the system, including memory and network access. The Intel ME runs on a separate microprocessor embedded within the main processor; Intel hasn’t shared much information about its inner workings. The primary purpose of Intel ME is to enable remote management capabilities mainly through AMT, which gives wide, hidden from the user, access to the system. There are possibilities to deactivate it fully or partially, which was requested by the NSA.

Meltdown and Spectre

In 2017, Although reported as a honest mistake, researchers from Google, Cyberus Technology, the Graz University of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, University of Maryland, Rambus and the University of Adelaide and Data61 found critical vulnerabilities in modern processors. These hardware vulnerabilities allowed programs to steal data which is currently processed on the computer for over 20 years.

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