US national security imperatives on semiconductors may not be enough for Intel. Last week the semiconductor titan reported fourth-quarter results that missed even their diminished expectations. The company blamed “persistent macro headwinds”. Worse yet, in the first quarter of 2023 revenue is forecast to fall 40 per cent.

The once indomitable force of Silicon Valley has stagnated for years. Chief executive Pat Gelsinger, brought in at some expense in 2021, along with an invigorated strategy to go big on chip production, has had a dicey time. Despite the Joe Biden administration’s willingness to allocate billions to create national champions in semiconductors, Intel’s immediate worry is over an unthinkable dividend cut to preserve cash.

The worry for Intel is that its fading business is not cyclical but secular as rivals AMD, Arm and Taiwan Semiconductor take market share in chips for personal computers as well as for enterprise servers. Analysts, for example, forecast that AMD’s revenue in 2023 will rise by 6 per cent. Intel’s should drop by nearly a fifth, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.