Intel is making the right capex moves to position itself for a future situation where Taiwanese production could get interrupted. Intel is right alongside TSMC and Samsung at the leading edge and it would be an exaggeration to suggest otherwise. Marginal differences in road map and quality over the short term don't tell us the full picture in a business where course-corrections take years and years to bear fruit.
> If Intel is not good enough for US, why would it be good for EU?
Who said they're not good enough? They're slightly worse than TSMC, but still put out competitive chips for desktops, laptops and servers. Slightly more expensive, slightly higher power consumption but still, perfectly acceptable and still the market leader in some areas.
> It's clear that EU did what US wanted instead of what would be in its interest.
No, it's not clear. Why would the EU do that? They did the best they could given the very limited choice present.
Intel is still holds the market on laptops and desktops at about 3/4. They simply push more volume. TSMC makes desktop chips for Apple, but Apple isn’t the majority. The rest of TSMC’s production is almost exclusively GPUs and phones, and this could change. If Intel executes well on their next nodes, and should TSMC slip at all, Intel could pull ahead. Never count Intel out. People thought Intel would die after the z80 ate their lunch, after the Athlon 64 ate their lunch, and now they say it again… I think it’s all just noise.
Intel has lots of leading edge fabs in the US and continues to build them. They made some business mistakes around not opening up their chip design the way ARM enabled ... but the tech capacity is all there. Now they are doing contract production for chips that they did not design so I expect them to catch up in a few years.
Meanwhile Chris Miller in Chip War argues that Intel will fail again since nobody wants to give their secrets to Intel. If you’re Apple, for example, then handing over chip designs to Intel isn’t ideal in terms of competition.
It's clear that EU did what US wanted instead of what would be in its interest.