1. It's telling because if Intel thought this was a good investment then they would have made it without the grants. The stock buybacks show they had the cash to do it recently.

2. Alternatives to giving grants: Tax credits, low interest loans, import duty, law, executive action, threaten anti-trust lawsuit, purchasing shares, leverage intelligence agencies, nationalize. The most straightforward way would be to extend the regulations around exporting critical technologies to make it unfeasible for new chips to be manufactured overseas. There's pros/cons for all choices.

Re 1,thanks for clarification. I wasn't sure if you thought it was a point contrary I. E. "something, something, greedy"

Re 2, it's worth noting that the majority of Chips does come in the form of tax breaks and loans

Or Intel figured they could do stock buybacks with their own money knowing they could use someone else’s money for domestic manufacturing development?

A multinational needn’t be concerned with the long term prospects of any one country…

Oldest game in the book!

Have you ever seen a consulting company tell a client, “you don’t have to pay us to do your R&D, we have enough money to do it ourselves!!!”