A good point the article made is that Intel now wants subsidies to finance their R&D. Which is basically the government subsidizing the stock buybacks.
I think in a situation like that the subsidies should come in form of the government buying bonds from the company or Intel offering a stake in the company so the government can profit from their investment in the future. Otherwise it's just redistributing money to capital owners, which is stupid and gives an incentive to make bad business decisions.
They are asking for them, but it's important to contextualize that the entire chip industry is receiving boat loads of cash abroad. Case and point South Korea has announced $451Bn in chip subsidies [1]. Which dwarfs the measly $52bn American Chips Act subsidies [2]. America could sit it out and risk South Korea killing American fabs like it killed American Commercial Shipyards in the 80's or it can respond with subsidies of its own.
I think in a situation like that the subsidies should come in form of the government buying bonds from the company or Intel offering a stake in the company so the government can profit from their investment in the future. Otherwise it's just redistributing money to capital owners, which is stupid and gives an incentive to make bad business decisions.