It's as if this person has no understanding of business or economics or the heart of man...... Subsidies/grants are given out to get a business to do something

It's as if this person has no understanding of business or economics or the heart of man...... Subsidies/grants are given out to get a business to do something that isn't in the business' interest or is too low a probability of a high payout to be considered without what is essentially a bribe from the government. In this case, those grants are driving massive malinvestment in excess semiconductor fab capacity in locations and at capacity levels that currently don't make a lot of sense for said investment from a business perspective. They will only pay off if China gets uppity enough to wreck the Taiwan/Asian supply chain/production capacity. From a business perspective, overbuilding like that for the chance of China doing something stupid is foolish because you risk large losses as excess capacity kills your pricing ability and if the low probability event happens your existing capacity would be worth even more without the excess capacity you are building, which blunts the upside. From the government perspective 8 billion in grants is a no brainer because it is driving a multiplier of investment (last I saw was around 100 billion) that will blunt the negative effects of China doing something stupid and ensure you maintain enough supply to handle military and some civilian semiconductor demand in that rare event. That Intel buys back stock is irrelevant. They are doing that because it is in their shareholders self interest for them to do so, because the investment opportunities (i.e. the building more fabs the subsidy is inducing) makes less sense than just giving shareholders their money back in a tax efficient manner. In some sense all of this type of article is formulaic in its stupidity. It's always "Why aren't you guys doing communism/fascism/dictatorship?" to which the correct response that is never discovered in the article is "because the last few hundred years of history have shown us it works far better to let individuals make their own choices and reap the benefits and costs of doing so, as innovation is far higher in that system and economics can drive failure of ideas/businesses rather than political choices, which self regulates to a better outcome, as long as you deal with the monopoly corner cases with effective antitrust regulation."