WSJ What’s News - Could the U.S. Government Be Considering Buying a Stake in Intel?

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

A.M. Edition for Aug 15. People familiar with the matter say the chip maker is in talks with the Trump administration, as WSJ reporter Stu Woo explains. Plus, ahead of the landmark summit in Alaska between President Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, WSJ South Europe bureau chief Marcus Walker explains how Ukraine’s military seems to have accepted the reality that it may not be able to win back its lost territory. And, Apple reinstates its blood oxygen monitoring feature in some of its watches following a bruising patent dispute. Azhar Sukri hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get to Toronto's main venues like Budweiser Stage and the new Roger Stadium with Go Transit. Thanks to Go Transit's special online e-ticket fairs, a $10 one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel on any weekend day or holiday anywhere along the Go Network. And the weekday group passes offer the same weekday travel flexibility across the network, starting at $30 for two people and up to $60 for a group of five. Buy your online go pass ahead of the show at go-transit.com slash tickets. Talking tough, President Trump throws down a challenge to his Russian counterpart ahead of their high-stakes summit in Alaska. It's a war that should have never happened. If I weren't president, in my opinion, he would much rather take over all of Ukraine. But I am present and he's not going to mess around with me. Plus, could the U.S. government take a stake in Intel? We report on another possible departure

from business as usual under Trump. And Apple brings back blood oxygen monitoring to some of its watches. It's Friday, August the 15th. I'm Azhar Sukri for the Wall Street Journal. Here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, will arrive in Alaska today

with two very different goals in mind for how to end the war in Ukraine. After initially playing down the summit as a way to feel out Putin's position, Trump in recent days has said he would urge Putin to accept a ceasefire seeking to jumpstart, long-stalled negotiations. For Putin, the aim when the leaders meet

at an air base outside of Anchorage, will be to stay in Trump's good graces while still trying to reassert Moscow's dominance over Kyiv. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said he wants to bring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into the talks.

I think it's going to be a good meeting, but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we're having. We're going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelensky, myself, and maybe we'll bring some of the European leaders along, maybe not. I don't know that it's going to be very important.

We're going to see what happens. And I think President Putin will make peace. President Zelensky will make peace. We'll see if they can get along. And if they can, it'll be great. But while Trump is aiming to move quickly to bring an end to the war, journal correspondent Thomas Grove says Putin will be happy to play the long game. One of the most important things that this does for Russia and Putin right now is that it prolongs peace talks. It basically extends the amount of time during which Russia can show that it's being a good partner in priest talks and that it wants to move forward towards peace.

without getting sanction. Trump has threatened sanctions more and more in the past as he's become visibly frustrated with Russia. For Trump, is ultimately showing the United States and the rest of the world that he was able to clinch a very hard-to- attain peace between Russia and Ukraine. He's telegraphed that his own expectations for that may be low. When it comes to Russia, they want to see relations normalized as much as they can be between the U.S. and Russia. They want international recognition for the gains that they've made on the battlefield and continue to make on the battlefield. And coming up later in the show, we'll look at how the military situation on the ground may force Ukraine to reluctantly give up territory to Russia in exchange for peace.

In Washington, Attorney General Pam Bondi has tapped Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as the so-called Emergency Police Commissioner to lead the city's Metropolitan Police Department. Bondi said in the directive that the local police must receive approval from Cole before issuing any orders, leading city officials to reject President Trump's latest move to tighten his grip on DC's local police force. Responding to the order in a social media post, Mayor Muriel Bowser said there was, quote, no statute that conveys the district's personnel authority to a federal official. Trump sent the National Guard to the city for at least a month, while Bondi has also opened a door for ICE or immigration and customs

enforcement to take a more active role in the capital. Intel and the Trump administration are discussing the possibility of the US government taking a financial stake in the troubled chipmaker. That's according to people familiar with the matter. Last week, Trump called for CEO Lip Bhutan to step down, describing him as being, quote, highly conflicted. That was a reference to Tarn's web of investments in Chinese technology companies. Journal reporter Stu Wu says the deal could advance the President's America first manufacturing agenda while relieving political pressure on the company's beleaguered chief executive. Stu, what do we know so far about this pretty unusual proposal?

So President Trump discussed this idea during a meeting at the White House and Monday with Intel CEO, LeButon. And that's according to my colleagues reporting. And these talks are in really early stages right now. They could still fall apart. If it did happen, it would be unprecedented. The U.S. government taking an active role in a private company. Why is Trump describing Tarn as being conflicted in this case?

Liputon is known as Mr. Chip, but that's not because of what he's done in America. He was a venture capitalist who invested in a lot of chip companies that have become some of the biggest and most important in China. So that's number one. The second thing is that more recently, he spent 12 years a CEO of a silicon company called Cadence. And a couple weeks ago, Cadence pled guilty to selling illegal technology to a Chinese military university. And that happened during Tan's tenure. And so Trump is implying, hey, Intel's one of the most important chip companies in America. Can we trust this guy to lead it? Intel is definitely one of the most important companies in America, as you say. Trump has been far more interventionist in the tech sector than his predecessors.

Tell us more about that. So I think there are two things happening here. The first thing is that the U.S. government believes the military battles of the future are going to be won via artificial intelligence. AI helps design nuclear weapons, fighter jets, missiles, things like that. And the thing that powers the best AI are cutting-edge computer chips. The issue is that the U.S. really does make its own computer chips right now. Intel is their best shot at doing that. So they really want to ensure that if something happens to America's trading partners, that they

can produce the best computer chips in America itself. So that's number one. The second thing is that Trump has just taken a more active stance in the matters of private companies. So he recently got Nvidia and AMD to other chip companies to pay the government 15% of their sales to China in exchange for exporting these really coveted chips. He also approved a recent deal between a Japanese steel company buying an American one, but the U.S. government has a golden share. They have some say into how it operates. So the U.S. government under the Trump administration is really saying, hey, these things steal, advanced computer chips. That really matters to American national security. So we wanted to have a say as to how you run your private companies.

Journal reporter Stu Wu, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Thanks for having me. Now here's a bit of good news if you're an Apple watch user and have been missing its blood-oxygen feature, it's back. Nearly two years after Apple removed the capability due to a bruising patent dispute with medical tech firm Massimo, the US giant has reinstated it in some models. Apple said users of some models of the watch series 9 and 10, as well as the Ultra 2, would be able to use the redesigned feature following a software update. A spokesman for Massimo didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Staying with Apple, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway sold shares in the iPhone maker during the second quarter, further reducing its stake.

That's according to a regulatory filing by Berkshire yesterday. At the same time, the Omaha-Nabraska company added Insurer United Health Group to its portfolio. Coming up with Ukraine on the back foot militarily in its war with Russia, we look at how the Trump-Putin meeting could affect prospects for peace. That story after the break. Now, as we heard earlier, one of the main sticking points in today's summit between President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, is likely to be the issue of Ukrainian territory. As the journal's South Europe bureau chief, Marcus Walker says, a ceasefire remains a long shot despite the meeting. That's because Putin is demanding that Ukraine retreat from strategically vital regions, a demand that Kiev and its European allies flatly reject.

For Putin, it's about more than just territory. Putin's deeper goal here has been to reimpose political control over Ukraine. That is, not only gobble up large swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine, but recreate Russia's former and lost political sway over the rump of Ukraine, while also revising the ending of the Cold War and taking a big step towards rebuilding Russia's sphere of influence deep into Eastern Europe. his strategic goals, which he sees as a kind of historic mission, go much, much further. And for Ukraine and for the Europeans, it's really about limiting this.

Now, Ukraine at this point is coming around to accept the bitter reality that they lack the strength to get all of their territory back potentially forever. They've basically implicitly admitted that, you know, might well be the outcome in this call between the Europeans and Trump. Zelensky, the others were saying, look, first we have a ceasefire, then we'll talk about territory. So by saying he's willing to talk about territory, he's admitting he's not going to get it all back. As for the bigger picture, well, it's pretty much as it has been for the past two years, really. The Russians are grinding forward slowly and at a very, very high cost in lives

in killed and wounded men, while the Ukrainians are also suffering losses less so, but at a level that they are struggling to replace. So the dynamic over time is not at all favorable for Ukraine. The war has been compared by many people to a mix of World War I and high-tech drones. I made a long tour of almost the entire front line in the south, east, and the north last month. And yeah, it's a combination of very old-fashioned, extremely gruesome and grueling infantry fighting with artillery and other conventional forms of firepower, but in the sky an increasingly sophisticated war of drones using all sorts of advanced technology, including AI. So, Marcus, finally, is this summit going to be able to end the war? It would be a big

surprise. Much as the Ukrainians are tired, the Europeans would love to move on. Trump would love to get a deal and move on. But Putin has not got the result he wants yet, which is to reimpose political control over Ukraine. And if Russia sticks to its broader political goals, then unfortunately we are a long way from the end of the war, because nobody is yet putting enough pressure on Russia to rethink and to scale down those political goals. That's journal South Europe Bureau Chief Marcus Walker. Marcus, thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

And that's it for What's News for this Friday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bark. Our supervising producer is Pearce Lynch. I'm Azhar Sukri for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, have a great weekend and thanks for listening. Thank you.