Maybe it's worth noting that the new CEO's explosive statement, Intel would give up development of leading edge nodes (14A and beyond) unless they find a large external customer in advance, hardly got any attention on Hacker News or other websites. But that was almost certainly the reason the US administration got involved. This blog post thankfully makes this point clear.
In the past, most people (including myself) just assumed the worst case was merely Intel selling its chip manufacturing division to some other US company which would then continue to develop new advanced nodes like 14A.
But that was not at all what Lip Bu-Tan (the new Intel CEO) suggested at the earnings call. He said Intel would simply stop developing new nodes and just use the existing 18A fabs as long as there is demand. And then, presumably, closing all the fabs and fully switching to TSMC, becoming another AMD.
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