The Heritage Foundation is a well-known conservative advocacy organization, and this proposal is being submitted through Bowyer Research Inc., which is associated with politically motivated corporate engagement campaigns. Under the policy, proposals from ideological filers — whether conservative or progressive — are voted against regardless of how the proposal is framed, because the underlying motivation is political advocacy rather than neutral fiduciary concern. Even setting aside the filer identity, Intel already provides extensive China-related risk disclosures in its annual 10-K filings, and the proposal's supporting statement makes clear its preferred outcome is a reduction or elimination of Intel's China business — a strategic operational decision that is not appropriate to mandate through a shareholder resolution.

This proposal is filed by an individual shareholder with no apparent institutional backing or track record as a governance activist, and there is no prior-year vote history to signal whether this represents a broad shareholder concern. Evaluating on the merits, Intel has a well-developed existing human rights due diligence program: it has conducted third-party Human Rights Impact Assessments since 2016, publishes a Human Rights Saliency Matrix, and discloses its processes through annual Corporate Responsibility Reports. The company's existing framework appears to address substantially what the proposal requests, and the board's opposition statement provides credible evidence that an additional commissioned report would not meaningfully add to available information. Without a prior-year vote showing significant shareholder support, and given the substantive existing disclosures, there is insufficient reason to override management's judgment here.

John Chevedden is a well-known individual governance activist with a strong track record of submitting substantive governance proposals, so this proposal deserves serious evaluation on its merits. However, Intel already has an independent Board Chair (Frank Yeary, and Dr. Barratt is taking over as independent chair immediately after the 2026 annual meeting), and the company's Corporate Governance Guidelines already establish a general policy that the Chair and CEO roles should be separate — exactly what this proposal requests. The proposal asks for an 'enduring' policy that would remove the board's flexibility to temporarily combine the roles during leadership transitions, but Intel demonstrated during its 2024-2025 CEO transition that preserving such flexibility (with Mr. Yeary serving briefly as Interim Executive Chair while a Lead Independent Director was simultaneously appointed) actually served shareholder interests well. Because the core governance improvement the proposal seeks is already substantially in place, a FOR vote is not warranted.