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But once you start making semi-conductors you start making money. The 100 billion is the seed capital. Semi-conductors pay for themselves once they're rolling. See samsung's balance sheet.

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If only. Intel is the only remaining company with own fabs, all others have long exited that particular line of business.

Designing chips makes money, manufacturing them in $10B and rising fabs that stop making profit after a few years not so much.

This is not a play against Intel, it is a play against TSMC which is the backbone of the Taiwanese economy. They very much haven't exited the foundry business and are very profitable ($7bn a year or so in net income), and are stealing away even the iDevice SoC business from Samsung these days...

Yup, my first thought when I saw the headline was "this is a non-military attack on Taiwan due to the KMT (pro-Beijing party) getting annihilated in the polls two weeks ago".

Let's not forget Samsung which is not that far behind and even more integrated than Intel.

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