Intel is central to America’s leadership in AI, but without redirecting capital toward rebuilding manufacturing, the United States risks losing technological sovereignty and economic security.
The technologies that underpin the future of warfare, industrial productivity, and global economic leadership—semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI)—are increasingly dual-use in nature. They are as vital to warcraft as they are to advanced tradecraft in manufacturing and autonomous vehicles, to digital commerce. In the midst of epicstrife and socioeconomic fracturing, the United States has found the courage to lead the world back onto the rails of prosperity and fair trade through peaceful negotiation and the reindustrialization of our country.
Intel at the Heart of America’s Tech Future
At the epicenter of this revolution lies Intel, America’s only manufacturer capable of producing advanced logic chips. Intel was born from leadership that bleeds American values and has evidenced Intel’s strategic value to American technology dominance. Former CEOs Pat Gelsinger and Craig Barrett are sounding the alarm to prioritize national security imperatives and human well-being over a corporation’s stock price.
Mr. Barrett’s recent op-ed lays out the winning game plan to stabilize and enhance Intel’s global leadership and also conveys the following blunt message in a much more eloquent manner than we do: Nothing else matters if Intel Foundry fails. The United States will never regain its footing in leading-edge semiconductor fabrication. Paramount to national security, the United States must fortify a domestic, American-led foundry, with process technology development and high-volume manufacturing on American soil.
Domestic buildout by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung is net positive, but not a cause for the growing, pervasive false sense of security in the markets. Leading-edge process technology cannot andwill not be airlifted to the United States. That is a stark impossibility. TSMC’s process technology is developed in Taiwan, and Samsung’s is in Korea. Their respective processes are sovereign assets. If Intel 18A fails in Arizona, there is no 14A in Ohio. Process technology advances sequentially. If the clock stops for American leading process technology, it will not restart.
How American Capital Fuels China’s Tech Rise
A recent investigation by the US House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States andthe Chinese Communist Party (CCP) revealed a disturbing trend: Several American investment firms, Sequoia Capital, GGV Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, GSR Ventures, and Walden International, have channeled billions of dollars into hundreds of Chinese technology companies that directly support the CCP’s military objectives, human rights abuses, and global ambitions to replace American technological leadership.
The investigation found that Walden, alone, has invested up to $2.2 billion in 140 unique investments. American capital has flowed not only in the form of dollars but also in the form of intangible support—global expansion, strategic guidance, regulatory navigation, technology transfer, talent recruitment, and credibility.
The Real Economy vs. the Financial Elite
In contrast with the subversive effects of offshoring and permitting the financial elite to profit from critical IP transfer to our adversaries, American semiconductor and digital infrastructure industries are filled with skilled, patriotic-minded professional tradespeople, dismayed and disenfranchised.
Many Americans appreciate the efforts of our government to ensure functioning and orderly capital markets. They comprehend a sustained selloff in NVIDIA or Tesla, together accounting for approximately 10% of the S&P 500 and considerable exposure to China, may crater the markets. In surreal fashion, our country weighs stock market value against the preservation of our Republic for which our Nation stands. Perhaps it is time for the real economy to lead us toward prosperity.
Two Pillars of Semiconductor Sovereignty
Sustainment and resilience of technology leadership and semiconductor sovereignty require two critical components: (1) leading-edge process technology development and (2) high-volume manufacturing capacity. After decades of offshoring, today, only one United States-based foundry, Intel, has any chance to compete in the race for next‑generation node development.
Lessons from Taiwan
Since Texas Instruments failed to promote Morris Chang decades ago, multi-tiered and multi-cultural innovation hubs like TSMC have risen to global leadership, anchoring robust ecosystems across design, fabrication, packaging, and supply chain. TSMC’s leap into the trillion-dollar club has cemented Taiwan as the fortress of leading innovation.
Domicile of chip process technology development dictates the location of talent, suppliers, and startups. Led by Mr. Chang, TSMC’s ecosystem emerged from Taiwan’s control and design of the node roadmap. Intel, and thus America’s semiconductor ecosystem, now pays the price of having siloed its innovation. If the United States cedes any more of its position in process technology development and volume manufacturing, our economy and national security will effectively depend on foreign sovereigns and their technological innovation ecosystems.
Over the past three decades, the United States has ceded significant portions of its manufacturing footprint—particularly in complex, capital-intensive, and precision-driven sectors. This offshoring, once seen as economically efficient, has now become a strategic liability. We cannot decouple digital innovation from physical capacity. We have seen how fragile the value chain is when one component breaks—whether it’s etch equipment, gas delivery, or power distribution systems. Failure to re-establish the industrial base to support these systems here at home will cede thefuture of AI and semiconductors to our adversaries.
Fixing the “Missing Middle”
For decades, US policy and investment have focused heavily on two ends of the spectrum: upstream research and development (R&D) and downstream consumer technology. But the “missing middle”—industrial-scale production, tooling, materials, and systems integration—has been underfunded, underprioritized, and increasingly outsourced to East Asia. This middle layer is where semiconductor scale-up happens. It’s where AI infrastructure becomes durableand deployable. And it’s where economic resilience is either built—or lost. Without domestic capability from upstream through the downstream supply chain, the United States cannot maintain a sovereign AI stack.
The United States now waltzes with a generational risk on a global scale. America’s chip dependence now extends to its strategic industries. Geopolitical disruption threatens access to Taiwanese or South Korean fabs, a severing of access to sovereign platforms for AI, biotech, space systems, and military infrastructure. Salvaging Intel’s next node(14A and beyond) is a national security priority. If American process innovation cannot scale, we lose. Period.
Globalization addicted us to deficit-fueled, cheap labor and gluttonous consumption. Since abandoning the goldstandard in the 1970s and the advent of the Eurodollar banking and capital markets, the financial economy has increasingly decoupled from the real economy, with speculation, arbitrage, and share buybacks masquerading as prosperity, all to the detriment of the foundations of real wage growth, industrial productivity, and manufacturing resilience.
Leadership is valiantly pursuing the reversal of several decades of sacrificing our defense capabilities andundermining our domestic industrial manufacturing base. The current structure of the US economy rewards capital for short-term asset appreciation while penalizing long-term investment in physical production. The result is a cost of capital regime that inhibits the expansion of domestic manufacturing, technical training, and job creation. Our neglectof real productivity must end, and we must reclaim our institutional credit from other nations that have prospered while we pay their tab.
Redirecting Capital Toward Industrial Resilience
It is time to pick a lane. In his confirmation hearing testimony, Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg concurred withSenator Wicker (R-MS) in support of and the need to “significantly grow” the Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), emphasizing that OSC “needs to move faster.” This is a national security priority. The Department of Defense (DOD) and its peers must lead the turning of the capital markets tanker away from short-term levered arbitrage and toward industrial base resilience and long-duration alpha via organic income growth. Let venture capital waste gullible capital on moonshots for exits. Fiduciary-oriented, institutional capital must prioritize American companies that modernize and scale American advanced manufacturing and semiconductor tooling. It must ensure ethical AI deployment at the edge and in infrastructure in parallel with the prioritization of apprenticeship in critical industries. Our country must once again build what it invents.
The past four decades of globalization hollowed out America’s manufacturing capacity. In the pursuit of “free trade,” the United States offshored not only assembly lines, but critical capabilities: process engineering, industrial automation, high-precision machining, and advanced materials manufacturing. These were not just jobs—they were the muscle memory of industrial leadership, and we let it atrophy.
Trade must be subordinated to this strategic imperative. That means correcting decades of trade imbalance,decoupling from adversarial supply chains, and reasserting domestic production as the centerpiece of Americaneconomic power. This requires collective acknowledgment that manufacturing is a strategy, not a marketing gimmick.
We must stop pretending our socioeconomic model is compatible with that of an authoritarian communist regime. Ourcapital market participants must stop and think about their fellow countrymen who risk their lives so others can charge fees for deflecting financial risk into hardworking Americans’ 401 (k) s. Bridgewater just sold $1.4 billion worth of Chinese stock holdings after years of investing in the PRC to the detriment of our national security. Perhaps some Americans are starting to get the message. At the end of the day, America must lead with its industrial base and let thefinancial cart return to its rightful place behind the unreigned horse.
A Call for Industrial Revival
Our Republic must take the risks and socio-economic body shots necessary to resuscitate our industrial base.Hopefully, our elected representatives agree that saving democracy is worth the risk. Now is the time for Americancapital to flee fragile, extractive finance and navigate into the essential layers of the real economy—where human wellbeing, technology, and economic security converge. The antidote is not austerity—but a conscious reallocation of capital toward entrepreneurs, builders, manufacturers, and real asset operators. The US government must lower the costof productive credit, take risks to reshore industry, and build economic infrastructure that empowers the Americanworkforce.
Real prosperity is not speculative—it’s built. It is forged in fabs, tooling shops, foundries, and data infrastructure. It issustained by wages, training, and long-term returns—not meme stocks and debt-fueled dividends. We must not forsakewhat we have at hand, and we must focus on “quick wins”. This is neither a commercial pitch nor a political debate—itis a national security imperative. Let’s treat it as such.
About the Authors: Jason Frank and Damon Pitler
Jason Frank is CEO and Founder of AI Infrastructure Partners, Director of TGM Systems, and CEO of HIS Innovations Group.
Damon Pitler is Chief Investment Officer of AI Infrastructure Partners. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Critical Minerals Forum as well as TGM Systems.
Image: DesignRage/shutterstock
