America’s technological supremacy isn’t being lost to competition — it’s being surrendered by the very boards entrusted to protect it. No case exposes this more than Intel, once Silicon Valley’s pride, now the poster child for why US corporate governance must be rewritten for an era of technoeconomic warfare.
The structural misalignment begins with Delaware law, governing most US public companies, which interprets fiduciary duty as maximizing shareholder value — today. The notorious Revlon doctrine compels directors to chase immediate returns, even if it guts future competitiveness or security. CEOs and boards come and go — average CEO tenure is under five years — while their short-termism leaves lasting damage. Near-term performance bonuses, plagued with self-interested “short-termism,” tend to narrow options for successors that leave the cupboard bare, saddling their successors with their own self-dealing and imperiling long-term viability of the company. Dual-class shares and supermajority voting let management entrench itself, making true board independence a facade. The result is a system rigged for expediency and self-interest, not stewardship.

Intel’s board is the archetype: directors with deep China exposure, insulated from consequences, willing to mortgage American leadership for another quarter’s numbers.
Beijing’s playbook is direct: use market access to force foreign firms to share proprietary tech. Forced tech transfer is standard practice, as documented by US and European watchdogs. Apple, IBM, Ford, Qualcomm — the list of companies forced to choose between IP and access is long. Boards under pressure for growth routinely make the wrong choice — rationalizing the damage as a problem for their successors.
Intel isn’t an anomaly; it’s an omen. Across biotech, cloud, and chips, American corporate leaders are trading the future for fleeting profits — enabled by a governance regime that demands little more.
https://fortune.com/2025/09/20/i-helped-expose-intel-china-corporate-governance-crisis/…
America’s technological supremacy isn’t being lost to competition — it’s being surrendered by the very boards entrusted to protect it. No case exposes this more than Intel, once Silicon Valley’s pride, now the poster child for why US corporate governance must be rewritten for an era of technoeconomic warfare.
The structural misalignment begins with Delaware law, governing most US public companies, which interprets fiduciary duty as maximizing shareholder value — today. The notorious Revlon doctrine compels directors to chase immediate returns, even if it guts future competitiveness or security. CEOs and boards come and go — average CEO tenure is under five years — while their short-termism leaves lasting damage. Near-term performance bonuses, plagued with self-interested “short-termism,” tend to narrow options for successors that leave the cupboard bare, saddling their successors with their own self-dealing and imperiling long-term viability of the company. Dual-class shares and supermajority voting let management entrench itself, making true board independence a facade. The result is a system rigged for expediency and self-interest, not stewardship.

Intel’s board is the archetype: directors with deep China exposure, insulated from consequences, willing to mortgage American leadership for another quarter’s numbers.
Beijing’s playbook is direct: use market access to force foreign firms to share proprietary tech. Forced tech transfer is standard practice, as documented by US and European watchdogs. Apple, IBM, Ford, Qualcomm — the list of companies forced to choose between IP and access is long. Boards under pressure for growth routinely make the wrong choice — rationalizing the damage as a problem for their successors.
Intel isn’t an anomaly; it’s an omen. Across biotech, cloud, and chips, American corporate leaders are trading the future for fleeting profits — enabled by a governance regime that demands little more.
fortune.com/2025/09/20/i-h