Federal government investing in Tesla and Intel

From a revenue perspective, the Intel stock investment was a good investment.

But that was as much dumb luck as anything, big AI money started chasing chip and memory manufacturers after getting cool feat about the AI developers themselves. The stock purchase confers no special voting rights that other stock holders have. But is a role of federal government to be stock pickers? Moreover, it seems like a potential conflict of interest for a regulator to be profiting directly over a regulated party, the federal government can do a lot of things to help or harm a corporation, but now they are making money off the deal.

I guess the flip side is that the government already was committed by Secure Enclave and CHIPS funding to invest in chip makers. If they are going to give businesses money, it makes sense for taxpayers to get some of the upside. Currently most economic development programs don’t directly benefit government agencies with corporate shares, though in many cases tax revenue does exceed the money invested – if you believe the corporation wouldn’t expand without the investment – which isn’t always true.

Should the federal government gotten Tesla shares for what it invested in that company early on?