It was 2015, and Intel’s CEO Brian Krzanich couldn’t hide his anxiety about China’s push to seize a bigger share of the world’s chip industry. As chairman of the Semiconductor Industry Association, the U.S. chip industry’s trade group, Krzanich was tasked with hobnobbing with U.S. government officials. Usually this meant asking for tax cuts or reduced regulation. But this time, as he met with senior Obama administration officials, the topic was different: convincing the U.S. government to do something about China’s massive semiconductor subsidies.  America’s chip firms were all caught in the same bind. China was a crucial market, either because these firms sold directly to Chinese customers or because their chips were assembled into smartphones or computers in China. But, at the same time, the Chinese government had adopted a formal policy of trying to cut them out of China’s supply chain, devoting billions of dollars and its best minds to developing its own sem