President Donald Trump on Thursday demanded that Intel’s new chief executive, Lip-Bu Tan, immediately resign over alleged conflicts of interest, continuing a weeks-long controversy over the semiconductor veteran’s business ties to China.

“Intel CEO is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. He did not explain the nature of Tan’s purported conflicts.

The comments come two days after Republican Senator Tom Cotton wrote to Intel board chair Frank Yeary to “renew my concern about the security and integrity of Intel’s operations.” The letter was in reference to Tan’s background as a prolific investor in Chinese technology companies for decades, which Cotton said could negatively affect the U.S.’s national security, given Intel’s position as the largest advanced chipmaker in the country.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is a former chairman of Cadence Design Systems, which recently admitted to violating U.S. export controls by selling chip design software to a Chinese university with links to the Chinese military. Image: Intel

Tan is a well-known figure in Silicon Valley, where he has worked for decades and established a global presence in the semiconductor and venture capital worlds. His San Francisco-headquartered investment firm and its Hong Kong-based spinoff have led numerous rounds of funding into Chinese tech firms. Among the better-known companies Tan has previously invested in is Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), China’s largest chipmaker.

Tan also came under criticism last week after his former company, California-based Cadence Design Systems, disclosed that it had violated U.S. export controls by selling its chip design software to a Chinese university. Cadence, which Tan led as chairman before leaving in 2015, is itself a producer of chip design software used in chip design. Tan’s connections and business history have drawn renewed attention from Trump’s tirade.

Intel and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Intel’s shares, however, fell 3 percent in pre-market trading in New York on Thursday morning following Trump’s post.

Tan was appointed Intel’s CEO in March after the company’s board ousted his predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, in December. Gelsinger had left the company in 2022 to take the top job at rival chipmaker VMware, but returned to Intel in early 2023 as CEO after the company admitted it had fallen significantly behind in advanced chipmaking and was losing ground to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Tan was immediately thrust into the center of a turnaround effort for the Silicon Valley giant.

Intel is the only U.S.-headquartered company capable of making advanced semiconductors, but it has also largely missed out on the new boom industry of artificial intelligence chips, which many experts see as the new frontier of the global chip race. Intel has received billions of dollars in government subsidies and loans to help restore its competitiveness, but with the company trailing behind TSMC in advanced manufacturing, the expectation on Tan has been great from day one.

In July, Tan warned that Intel would have to halt the development of its next-generation manufacturing technology if it did not find a “significant external customer” to support the project by the end of the year. If Intel were to pull the plug on the effort, TSMC would effectively have a monopoly on leading-edge chipmaking, which has wide-ranging implications for the semiconductor industry as well as U.S. national security.

The uncertainty over Intel’s future has coincided with Tan’s moves to quickly cut costs to restore profitability, which have drawn praise from some on Wall Street but also fueled concerns about the chipmaker’s long-term prospects.

Cotton, in his letter to Intel’s board on Tuesday, suggested that the potential national security and trade implications of Tan’s appointment demand greater scrutiny. Intel, as a recipient of billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies and loans, has a “responsibility to be a good steward of those funds,” wrote Cotton, the Republican senator for Arkansas. “Intel is required to be a responsible steward of American taxpayer dollars and to comply with applicable security regulations,” Cotton added. “Mr Tan’s associations raise questions about Intel’s ability to fulfill these obligations.”