Former US President Donald Trump has called for the new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to step down, claiming that the long-time semiconductor veteran is “highly conflicted.”

Trump’s statement on the social media network Truth Social, which he founded after being banned from Twitter, simply read: “The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem.”

The post on Thursday came without further elaboration on the specific nature of the conflict. The Silicon Valley chip giant declined to comment on Trump’s demand, as did the White House. Intel’s stock price did, however, fall 3 percent during pre-market trading in New York on Thursday morning, soon after Trump made the demand.

Tan’s previous business links to China were brought into sharp focus earlier this week in a letter from Republican Senator Tom Cotton to Intel board chair Frank Yeary. In the letter, Cotton highlighted Tan’s “extensive commercial and personal relationships with the People’s Republic of China” and his decades-long record as an investor in Chinese technology companies, among them Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, or SMIC, China’s largest chipmaker.

Cotton suggested that Tan’s past associations with Chinese firms are at odds with Intel’s current status as the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturer and the most important producer of chips in the United States. The comments came shortly after Cadence Design Systems, a US company that Tan previously led, admitted that it violated US export controls in a 2021 sale of chip design software to a Chinese university with military ties.

The US Department of Commerce last week announced a 1-year freeze on semiconductor design sales to the Shenzhen-based school. The incident at Cadence Design Systems, which dates back to 2021, has cast a cloud over Tan, who joined the company in 2018 but left in 2022 to join Intel.

Tan’s elevation to CEO of Intel earlier this year follows a tumultuous period for the Silicon Valley icon, which once dominated the global semiconductor market but has since lost ground in the rush to supply artificial intelligence chips to leading cloud and data center providers. In March, the company’s board of directors dismissed Pat Gelsinger, who had taken over in 2021, following a vote in December.

Tan, a serial Silicon Valley investor with a strong presence in Asian chip markets, was installed as CEO, charged with the dual task of cutting costs and restoring the company to its dominant position against chief rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a foundry operation that has outpaced Intel in more advanced chips.

Intel has struggled in recent years to keep pace with TSMC, while newer US upstarts like Nvidia have captured market share in artificial intelligence (AI) chips. This was the main impetus for Intel to invest in cutting-edge AI hardware, an area the company has so far missed out on. Intel was granted billions of dollars in subsidies and loans from the federal government to help it retain a leading-edge chipmaking presence in the United States, but Intel continues to trail TSMC in semiconductor manufacturing.

Tan, in June, in an interview with Bloomberg, warned that Intel could be forced to abandon its next-generation technology if it fails to find a “significant external customer” to use it. TSMC, which is already making 3-nanometer (nm) semiconductors at scale, would in such a scenario have an effective monopoly on leading-edge chipmaking, with major consequences for both the chip industry and US national security.

Tan has also launched a cost-cutting drive at Intel, which has had a positive effect on Intel’s profitability, though his success in addressing the company’s structural problems has been questioned by investors.

Senator Cotton’s letter to Intel’s Frank Yeary in this context warned of the need for “sensitivity and vigilance” in ensuring compliance with US export control laws, in particular for government-subsidized industries. “Intel is required to be a responsible steward of American taxpayer dollars and to comply with applicable security regulations,” Cotton wrote in his letter. “Mr Tan’s associations raise questions about Intel’s ability to fulfill these obligations.”

Intel, which is desperate to reduce TSMC’s lead in AI chips, has found itself caught in the middle of a geopolitical and commercial dispute. Tan’s connections to Chinese firms, on the one hand, are an argument for Silicon Valley veterans who have experience and networks in Asia in a globalized semiconductor market. But given the growing tech rivalry with Beijing, his investments in China and Cadence Design Systems’ export control violation are grist for those who argue that Tan is the wrong person to lead Intel at a sensitive moment.