[etempleton]

I agree with your point, but to answer your first question, “why Intel and not AMD?” It is simply because Intel is the only US company, and one of only three chip manufacturers worldwide to even try to make cutting edge chips and that has an outside shot of doing so in the next decade or so.

Domestic chip production is a national security interest. Frankly the US should be funding one or more companies to expand their fab capabilities.

[yareally]

AMD is a US company:

Founder: Jerry Sanders

Headquarters: Santa Clara, California

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD

[etempleton]

AMD doesn't fab their own chips. They currently utilize TSMC for that. Yes, if we were only talking about cutting edge chip design the US has no shortage.

[runako]

USG is looking at spending ~$10B on an Intel stake. It's worth wondering whether it might make more sense to instead put the same money into AMD and earmark it for US fabs. Ditto NVidia.

[etempleton]

There is an argument to be made there about how best to allocate the funds, but regardless of how the funds are deployed that spend has to be on Intel if you want it to protect US chip manufacturing and R&D. There are no other US chip manufacturers that are even trying to produce a chip under 12 nm. Unfortunately they are the only viable option.