This just smells like a rat like some others said. It's probably true that the deal while might not be essential probably did help Chinese cpu development. But

This just smells like a rat like some others said. It's probably true that the deal while might not be essential probably did help Chinese cpu development. But it's unlikely that US govt. at the time didn't understand the implication or couldn't have stopped it if they really wanted it. And it's not like reporters are finding out about this just now. I don't know the financial situation for AMD was at 2014 and they might have ceased to exists for all I know. But the article writes as if the money itself turned the company around. It's the R&D and design of a new chip that heralded a new era for AMD. And if I'm reading correctly the deal actually ended up being done in 2016 by which time most of the work on Zen was already done I presume. As someone else said in another comment it is kind of shameful how investment works. Forget about China/US thing, chip development is important work and no one invested in it properly. For big cloud companies simply the pressure over intel (with a competitive AMD) should have been worth it by itself.