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.
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.
Look up the Teddy Roosevelt era. Before his election and after he leaves.
Lockheed's CEO Carl Kotchian resigned after political pressure but he brought it on himself.
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...
These are news reports after the fact. It's not normal for a president to go on twitter and publicly deride someone into resigning.
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.
The norm that’s been transgressed here is getting more and more specific, isn’t it?
> 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?
Publicly or privately, why is one fine and the other not?
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.
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.
Did you ask a question? I’m not seeing one.
If the government has more info that’s even more reason to make this a matter of governance, and not twitter, IMO.
Genuine question, what do you think was the purpose of trump making that a public grievance instead of working on it directly with Tan?
I think Trump wants Tan out. Publicly calling him out puts pressure on him more than a private behind the scenes process that will take weeks/months versus a few days. Tan might be able to supplicate Trump by presenting a golden egg, though.
The public pressure puts Tan on defense which gives Trump leverage in negotiating with him. Not sure what Tan/Intel will need to give up to address any potential conflicts but remains to be seen what happens.
Right so publicly bully him into defense mode and either force him to resign or publicly bend the knee to trump.
If you genuinely don't see the problem here, I don't know what to say.
When President Obama privately asked Rick Wagoner to resign from GM, do you think that spared him from embarrassment or feeling bullied? There was absolutely no need for Rick Wagoner to have to resign, but the Obama administration needed a blood sacrifice to sell a bailout. A 30 year career at GM ended in disgrace because the government couldn’t trust him to turn around GM, even though he was a popular CEO.
But you’re right, the Obama administration didn’t publicly bully him, just privately did so. I don’t see one method as better than the other, there’s a use for either but they both have the same goals.
Fortunate for Tan, a lot of people don’t like Trump and he’ll probably gain more public support and potentially stay on as CEO. This is certainly where this backfires on Trump as his method of publicly shooting from the hip doesn’t always work. Tan becomes the target of the day, forgotten about a week later. This is where Trump diplomacy could work better through private methods, but we also don’t know if that’s been tried. Quite honestly, I think he just had somebody whispering in his ear and he just decided to tweet it.
I’m struggling to believe you are asking in good faith. He answered your question and your immediate response is to try and defend what the president did in terms of violating norms.
It seems like youve had an agenda since before you asked the question
I was asking in good faith, so not sure what to tell you. My agenda was to understand why public versus privately calling for a CEO's removal is better than the other since they have the same goal, but I can understand why someone would prefer one over the other.
I mean I answered that above. Not sure what else you want.
That reply was to lovich.
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.
I'd hardly call the GM situation comparable. In that case GM was asking the government for $16.6 billion (on top of $9.4 billion they had received under Bush).
Asking a company that wants a nearly $17 billion bailout to make some changes is not at all unreasonable or unusual.
As far as I know Intel is not asking the government for anything special, so having the government commenting on their internal organization is unusual.
Presumably all the teeth in the USG demands are about USG contracts.
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?
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.
Oh, so not the same kind of thing at all then...
You'll notice that none of the examples on this thread are the same things.
Yeah, it seems like a lot of hot air to prop up a false equivalency.
I suggest not asking questions you don't want the answers to.
I suggest not normalizing Trump's behaviors by creating false equivalencies.
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!
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.
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.
I described the situation you referenced to show why it is not the same as this situation. I did not declare ownership of a position.
Personally I'd say it's 99.99% in favor of run of the mill SNAFU. The 0.01% is mostly an allowance for the tendency of authoritarian systems to occasionally act in incredibly clumsy and incompetent ways. I feel this may be a factor of personal loyalty and ideological alignment receiving more consideration than competence in hiring and advancement decisions within authoritarian systems.
Dude, he altered a weather map with a Sharpie on live TV.
The theory behind this Constitution thing is as if, after altering the weather map, the weather changed.
Well, it would have if he had been allowed to use nuclear weapons on the hurricane instead of just a Sharpie.
I remember this blog post coming across HN when it was posted: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2025/07/07/support/
It's a good story, but what I'm remembering and is relevant here is this:
> At some point, I realized that if I wrote a wiki page and documented the things that we were willing to support, I could wait about six months and then it would be like it had always been there.
Authoritarians and fascists recognize this potential to create new "truths". If you say it enough, it's the truth. If you change things and say it's always been that way, then it was. If you're willing to drag through the mud, fire, prosecute, imprison, harm, or kill those who push back, fewer people push back. Even if everyone "knows" it's false, it no longer matters - most operate as if it is true.
Let's not forget that years later, Trump felt the need to inflict revenge on NOAA employees connected to sharpiegate: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/two-high-rankin...
That's why this shit makes people nervous, why people are on edge about information changing on government websites for no apparent reason. Trump has repeatedly shown a willingness to inflict his view of reality on others, with force, and without regard for facts.
You trivialize it at your own peril.
I am trivializing the LOC Constitution page thing and nothing you can say is going to make me stop, because the conspiracy theory behind it doesn't make any sense. By continuing to defend it, you're making my point for me about this Intel story (where malfeasance would make sense!).
But we're going around in circles and should probably just let this go.
In this thread: a household name in the infosec field tells us to chill out and let our guard down, despite a pattern of abuse and contempt for democratic norms not seen in developed Western countries since the 1930s.
Super normal response to a temporary website glitch at the 9th most popular online copy of the US Constitution.
Actually your original point was:
>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.
Which was you saying "this Intel thing is NBD and basically the same as a bunch of past things presidents have done."
That's the original false equivalency I called you out on. And which you now disagree with apparently, because now you think the Intel thing is potential malfeasance? I don't think you really know what your position is anymore.
I have no idea if it's no big deal or not, only that it's not unprecedented and of all the companies you'd expect to see something like this happen at in a normal administration, this is the one.
Again, what is the precedent for the president of the united states to publicly call on a CEO to resign, in the absence of a major scandal or company failure that has required the government to intervene to save the public / investors / etc?
You keep saying it's the same old shit but when people point out the differences you change the subject. You're basically a troll.
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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.
And in doing so you are inadvertently providing cover for their actions. The constitution fuck up was likely a mistake, but at the same time you should be reacting like the way others did because it sends a clear, strong message that people are watching.
And in this scenario your counterargument is so incredibly weak that you're not knocking down anyone's claims, you're just weakening your own position.
Ridiculous. The LOC thing doesn't even make sense as a movie plot. I'm not going to pretend it does just so I can keep the same polarity as you. It probably just doesn't make sense for us to keep talking about this.
You started the tangent with the Library of Congress thing and then demand people stop talking about it when they push back against your staked out position. I'm not sure what you expect other than it seems you've consistently ignored the point of people's posts here in favor of extrapolating something completely different.
People are interested in valid answers, not gaslighting.
It's not done by competent presidents. Trump is incompetent. Feds mind their own business except for doj, fbi, sec, fina who have evidence of wrong doing.