Perhaps the government should have required Intel be split into a fab business and a chip design business (as Intel has planned to do itself but hasn't been able to, for reasons). The chip design part can survive on its own without subsidies. Then the government can pump money into the fab business for national security reasons without affecting the chip design market too much.
The problem with Intel splitting is precisely that the fab is worth nothing.
No one will give Intel real money for the advanced fabs, as they are worthless right now. I suspect that's probably the main thing holding Intel back from doing that - they can't get a decent price on the fabs, and just spinning them out directly would probably lead to a fairly immediate failure without Intel's CPU design division funding development without immediate expectation of returns.
If one was a gambling man (with a good helping of pride), you keep the fabs with Intel (where the CPU design division is printing money) and subsidise the fabs and hope they finally stick the landing and start making half-decent chips again.
Intel should have split 15 years ago, ideally, but I'm not sure that splitting now isn't better than not doing it. If they fail to catch up to TSMC, it's possible that the manufacturing branch will drag the design branch down with it.
If they split, it's likely the fab side of the business will need a large infusion of cash in order to catch up (be it in the form of a government bailout or something else), or then they have to accept becoming a second-rate player. For which there is still a large market, so they might actually do decent-ish there. But that pretty much leaves TSMC in a monopoly position.
