The most should-be-wary insiders for a boss are the finance and HR people! Finance keeps the company from moving forward! For example, Intel. HR often doesn’t do what HR is supposed to do! For example, this time they ruined the Xiaohongshu IPO.

Former Intel CEO reflects deeply: for a decade they didn’t buy a single lithography machine, but spent $100 billion to repurchase stock! Let finance people steer for 15 years, missing the iPhone chip and the mobile era!
In July 2026, former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger appeared on the All-In Podcast, and had an honest conversation lasting nearly an hour with the host Jason.
From a chip powerhouse in the PC era to being left far behind by NVIDIA and TSMC, what went wrong for Intel over those past ten-plus years? Using 34 years of firsthand experience, former CEO Pat Gelsinger pointed out without hesitation the fundamental reason Intel “derailed”: letting finance people take the helm, replacing factory investment with a repurchase program worth a trillion, missing the iPhone and the AI chip wave—this reflection doesn’t just expose a major company’s technical misjudgments, but also the deeper problems the whole of Silicon Valley has been avoiding: when capital returns hijack technical decisions, what exactly is the cost?
The following is compiled based on the All-In Podcast July 2026 interview transcript, preserving the original meaning, but due to language conversion and adjustments for length, there may be slight differences from the original conversation in wording, with some trimming and reorganization—this is to note.
What Intel once did right: technical genes and long-termism
Gelsinger…