Intel’s funding threatened by Marco Rubio after ‘humiliating apologies’ to China

The image is from the visual China Group.

Marco Rubio threatened the government funding of chipmaker Intel after the company apologized to China.

Intel apologized to its Chinese partners and the Chinese public in December of last year, after it noted in a letter to suppliers that it would not use labor or source goods from the Xinjiang region. The US government has designated the Uyghur population in the Xinjiang region of China as a genocide, and this stipulation is required by US law as part of trading sanctions against China. In China, Intel caused a huge backlash against the company with its letter to suppliers.

The first report of this happened last year, and it showed that Intel apologized and deleted references to Xinjiang from its website. William Moss, Intel's senior director of corporate comms, told The Verge that the deletion was based on concerns from stakeholders to focus on broadly and globally applicable principles and policies.

The statement was issued on Monday.

Intel is cowardice is a consequence of economic reliance on China. Companies should move their supply chains to countries that don't use slave labor or commit genocide instead of apologizing and self-censorship. If companies like Intel continue to obscure the facts about US law to appease the Chinese Communist Party then they should be ineligible for funding under the CHIPS Act.

The CHIPS Act is a response to the global shortage of chips and the United States' diminishing ability to make them. The National Defense Authorization Act orNDAA, which was enacted last year, gave the Senate the authority to authorize $52 billion in federal investments to go to domestic chip research, design, and manufacturing. Despite broad bipartisan backing, the legislation is currently stuck in Congress, and that funding is only speculative at the moment. That means the threat to Intel is hypothetical.