The Rise, Fall, and Future of Intel: A Turning Point for America’s Tech Giant

How Intel’s Missed Opportunities and the CHIPS Act Could Shape the U.S. Strategy Against China

Image created by the author with the help of AI, or maybe the other way around.

Have you heard of “disruptive innovation”? This term initially arose in the mid-1990s in an article written by renowned American economist Clayton Christensen and his colleague Joseph Bower. Simply said, technological advancements emerge in specific fields on a regular basis. Initially, they frequently go unnoticed and are very inexpensive, but over time, they upend the market and establish totally new business principles.

The Missed Opportunity with the iPhone

On June 6, 2005, Apple’s famed founder, Steve Jobs, ascended the stage and announced that the company’s well-known Macintosh computers would switch to Intel processors. This declaration represented a significant triumph for the American semiconductor behemoth Intel, which had a tight grip on the global computer chip industry.

At the time, Steve Jobs and his staff were covertly developing the original iPhone model. They needed a new, powerful, and different chip to run it. So, Steve reached out to Intel and said, “Guys, we have a new device and we need a chip for it. It’s going to be revolutionary in…