The trouble is that Intel has serious baggage. The company was utterly dominant when Windows PCs were the hottest thing in tech, but through a series of blunders, it missed out on building the application processors for what came next: smartphones, then AI. Now, just as the US has started describing Intel as its national champion in the chipmaking arms race, the business ramifications of all those missteps are coming due: Over the past several months Intel's stock price has plummeted, and it has laid off 15,000 workers, begun a major restructuring, and faced a swirl of rumors that it will be broken up or even sold outright.