When President Trump announced that Apple would work with Intel to design and manufacture chips in the United States, most investors viewed the development through a familiar lens. Some saw it as an Apple story, reflecting the company’s desire to diversify manufacturing beyond Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Others viewed it as an Intel story, offering potential validation for a company that has spent years attempting to rebuild its manufacturing leadership. While both interpretations have merit, they may miss a larger development that is unfolding across several strategic industries.
For decades, U.S. industrial policy generally relied on grants, tax incentives, loan guarantees, and research funding. Government identified strategically important technologies, provided financial support, and hoped private industry would deliver the desired outcome. Increasingly, however, Washington appears to be adopting a different approach. Rather than merely subsidizing critical industries, the government is taking ownership positions, securing warrants, negotiating long-term purchase agreements, obtaining royalty rights, and establishing financial structures that allow taxpayers to participate directly in the success of technologies considered essential to national security and economic competitiveness.
The Apple-Intel announcement may prove to be one of the clearest examples of this emerging strategy.
Intel’s struggles over the past decade are well known. Manufacturing delays allowed TSMC to establish a commanding lead in advanced semiconductor production, while Nvidia emerged as the dominant beneficiary of the artificial intelligence boom. Investors increasingly viewed Intel as a company struggling to remain relevant in an industry it once dominated.
Yet Intel possesses something that no other American company can currently provide: a realistic path toward a domestically controlled leading-edge semiconductor foundry. In an era in which semiconductors have become essential to artificial intelligence, defense systems, telecommunications, cloud computing, and virtually every aspect of the modern economy, that capability carries strategic significance far beyond Intel’s financial performance.
The government’s decision to acquire an approximately 10% ownership stake in Intel reflects this reality. Washington is no longer acting solely as a regulator or provider of financial assistance. It has become an investor whose interests are increasingly aligned with the company’s success.
That relationship became far more interesting when reports emerged that Apple may manufacture selected chips through Intel Foundry. Apple has historically relied almost exclusively on TSMC for its most advanced processors. If Intel succeeds in attracting Apple as a meaningful customer, the implications extend well beyond incremental revenue. Such a decision would represent validation of Intel’s manufacturing capabilities and could encourage other companies to consider Intel as an alternative source of advanced semiconductor production.
More broadly, it would suggest that Washington’s effort to rebuild domestic semiconductor manufacturing is beginning to gain traction.
The significance of the Intel investment becomes clearer when compared with earlier approaches to industrial policy.
Historically, governments supported strategic industries through grants, subsidies, and loan guarantees. The objective was to encourage investment in technologies deemed important to national interests, but the structure often left taxpayers exposed to risk without providing meaningful participation in future gains.
The most frequently cited example remains Solyndra. The solar company received substantial government support before ultimately collapsing into bankruptcy. Regardless of one’s political views, the outcome highlighted a weakness in the traditional model. Taxpayers absorbed losses while receiving little opportunity to participate in any potential upside had the company succeeded.
The lesson was not necessarily that government should avoid strategic technologies. Rather, it demonstrated the limitations of a framework in which public capital assumed significant risk while private investors retained most of the rewards.
The emerging model appears designed to address that imbalance.
Intel is not an isolated case. A growing number of transactions indicate that the government is increasingly pursuing direct participation in strategically important technologies through ownership stakes, warrants, royalty structures, offtake agreements, and other investment mechanisms.
I show in Table 1 numerous examples of strategic technology investments by company and sector that illustrate the breadth of this effort.
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