What happens when the U.S. president tries to land the CEO of a publicly traded company?
We will find it in a weird case that not only changes the career of the CEO, but also changes the single-use corporate jewellery in American businesses, the global industry, and what the former Secretary of Commerce said is “The most important piece of hardware in 21 pieces of hardwareYingshi century. ”
The drama began on the morning of August 7, when President Trump A brief statement was issued About the Truth Social: “Intel’s CEO is highly conflicting and must resign immediately. There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!” The position suddenly focused on a letter sent to Intel’s chairman two days ago. It says Intel CEO Lip – This tan “It is reportedly controlled dozens of Chinese companies,” and a multinational company recently admitted to violating U.S. export controls “under Mr. Tan’s tenure”, among other charges. By the end of the day, Tan sent a letter to Intel employees, saying: “There is already a lot of misinformation about the circulating of my past roles…. I have been operating within the highest legal and ethical standards,” Intel told the media. “We look forward to us continuing to interact with the government.” The stock fell 5% in the market, another blow to Intel shareholders, who hoped that (eventually) might hit the lowest point.
How Intel loses its edge
If this were the same as Intel once the world’s largest and most advanced computer chip maker, it would be a one-day story.
Its decline began 20 years ago when the company made multiple acquisitions, many of which were telecommunications and wireless technologies. Conceptually, this makes sense. But acquiring the business was a skill of its own, and David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School, was on Intel’s board of directors at the time. wealth “100% of these acquisitions failed. We spent $12 billion and the return was zero or negative.”
Intel also tried to seize the behemoth’s phone opportunity but failed. The company learned about the opportunity and is providing chips for the popular BlackBerry phones. The chips are designed by Arm, a British company that designed chips but did not produce them. Understandably, Intel prefers to make mobile phone chips with its own architecture, called X86. The company decided to stop making arm chips and create X86 chips for the phone, recalling, “a major strategic mistake,” Yoffie said. “The plan was that we would have competitive products in one year and we didn’t have competitive products in ten years,” he recalled. “It wasn’t that we missed it. It was we screwed it up.”
As time goes by, simple managers gradually spread. The company abandoned smartphone chips. The CEO was replaced, but production issues continued until 2021, the first time Intel has survived, with its chips being two generations of competitors. These competitors are TSMC of Taiwan and South Korea Samsung.
In crisis mode, Intel’s board brought back Pat Gelsinger, who was at Intel VMware. As Intel CEO, he announced a very ambitious and expensive plan to regain the company’s position as the world leader in chip technology. In February, as the stock price fell, the board fired him and brought the tan.
Still, Intel is crucial because it is the only American company with technology and expertise to make leading chips in the United States – even though it has been in fact eight years. At the highest level of geopolitics, the primacy of chips is at the heart of power, and the fastest and most valuable chips in the world have been made only in Taiwan and South Korea in the past eight years. That’s why Congress passed Bargaining chips and scientific method With a bipartisan majority. It became law in 2022, sending billions of dollars to the U.S. and foreign countries since last year to build new factories and other chip infrastructure at Intel in the U.S., allocating the most subsidies, about $8 billion in loans, although the company has not received much of the funding, based on Milestone’s revocation in the Reactring Project project.
It seems that the money is a bit too late. “Intel has a great chance,” Gauvar Gupta said. Gartner Research firm. “They are getting all these subsidies from the government. But I don’t think they can execute them.” At this critical moment, poor performance is expensive. “A year and a half ago, Intel still had a positive attitude,” said Alvin Nguyen, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Now, not that much. Hit their negative emotions, just snowballing.”
Now let’s say Tan is going to quit as CEO. “Who wants this job?” asked Stacy Rasgon, a long-time technical analyst at Bernstein. He observed in a recent record that Tan “does not need to run Intel (he is rich and there are a lot of other things that can take up his time)… He obviously wants to do what is most favorable for Intel…” However, it is not clear whether the resignation is good or bad for the company, especially Trump’s back. “Rasgon, talk to him wealthasked: “How do you attract other people to the location?”
Tanning is not easy. “When (former boss) Pat Gelsinger left, it took a while to find a new CEO,” Gupta said. “It took a long time to find a candidate willing to control and lead the company in the direction.”
Still, Yoffie and three other former Intel directors are in one statement arrive wealth For a new company, a new board and a new CEO, Intel’s manufacturing division was spinning to an independent company to ensure U.S. chip manufacturing advantages.
Trump’s position makes himself at the center of a critically important problem in national security. Global advantages require reliable sources of cutting-edge chips. That’s why Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in 2024 it was “the most important hardware…” Taiwan TSMC is by far the world’s largest leading chip producer, which is building two Fabs in Arizona and subsidized under the Chip Act and plans more. “You can make an argument that the more capabilities you build in Arizona, maybe the less capabilities we need for Intel,” said Lasgon. But TSMC is not an American company, and Nguyen said, “The best technology for TSMC is certainly not here at the moment.”
Leave Intel behind. “They are the only American companies that can do it,” Rasgon said. “But Intel still has to prove that it can deliver. They don’t prove that.” Trump has attracted attention on the once idol company. But identifying and solving problems are two very different problems, and Intel-Observer is known for its twenty years of development.
