[pointyfence]

TSMC isn't a monopoly. You could go to Samsung like Tesla did. People weren't bringing monopoly worries in 2018 when Intel shut down their first disastrous attempt at being a foundry after about 5 years.

What you're seeing now is an "offer you can't refuse" to the fabless designers to direct private capital to Intel by the US for national security reasons and some political points. It buys Intel cash which it desperately needs for its foundry efforts and is a quasi-bailout of Intel shareholders and debtholders. The problem is that Intel doesn't know how to be a foundry in terms of volume and breadth of customers and will need an indefinite amount of capital to learn.

[bigbadfeline]

> The problem is that Intel doesn't know how to be a foundry in terms of volume and breadth of customers and will need an indefinite amount of capital to learn.

Indefinite is much less than infinite, they will learn because they have to. For better or worse, throwing money at the problem is how the US operates, trowing trillions into AI cannot risk being dependent on unstable Taiwan or capacity-constrained Samsung.