Uncle Sam shouldn't own Intel stock

I would agree with your approach if we were simply discussing whether the government should fund intel, but we’ve already committed to funding intel via the government. Pulling back would hurt intel and our interests. Now that intel has become reliant on our promised funding, it makes sense to attach conditions to the funding we need to do instead of just handing it out while getting nothing in return.

The first thing that jumps out is that it is impossible to avoid the absurd juxtaposition of a republican led major national corporate stake, after a decade of the auto bailouts being used as a poster child of policy that the current party in charge doesn't agree with.

Moving on from that, you make a good point that it may be the best compromise if the original deal is off the table. That said, in my eyes the implementation could be better. On both a practical and ideological level, I think it would behoove the dealmakers to lay out clear exit conditions. That could look something like anything from signing a covenant with Intel to freeze dividends and corporate buybacks and pay down debt (which is dangerously high for them currently), and then once the corporate balance sheet gets to a safer level, the US gov could run a public auction for the equity once that strike level is hit. I'm sure they could come up with something palatable. What's unexcusable is to apparently enter into a seemingly permanent zone of CCP-style state corporate capitalism without clearly laying out what that means for America going forwards. As an average citizen, I certainly have questions about the precedents being set, and to me it just looks haphazard and off-the-cuff.