Intel should beware of becoming a national champion

DATA MAY be the new oil, but it is semiconductors—the brains of the data economy—that these days vie with hydrocarbons as the business world’s biggest economic flashpoint. Like crude, the $500bn computer-chip industry is essential to industrial economies. It is regularly buffeted, as are oilmen, by excesses of supply and demand. And it is at the vortex of intense geopolitical rivalries. Its main wellspring, though, is not in the Persian Gulf, but on an island about 175km (110 miles) across the water from China. What is more, the Communist Party in Beijing claims the island in question, Taiwan, as part of its territory. That puts the semiconductor industry at the heart of the Sino-American power struggle—a uniquely uncomfortable place to be.