Donald Trump has called for the immediate resignation of Intel’s new chief executive, Lip-Bu Tan, saying the semiconductor industry veteran is “highly conflicted.”

“InTEL,” the former president wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday. “There is no other solution to this problem.”Tan has, meanwhile, launched an aggressive cost-cutting drive to bring Intel back to profitability, a move that has won some praise from investors but also further stirred concern about the company’s longer-term prospects.

That issue is what Cotton alludes to in his letter to Intel, where he said Tan’s associations raise the question of Intel’s ability “to fulfill these obligations.”

Trump’s comments were published shortly after Republican Senator Tom Cotton sent a letter to Intel board chair Frank Yeary on Wednesday expressing “concern about the security and integrity of Intel’s operations” over Tan’s business relationships with China. Cotton cited Tan’s record as an “active and prolific investor in Chinese technology companies” and said Intel, as the United States’ largest advanced chipmaker, needed a leader with “ironclad” ties to the U.S. government and “absolutely no business in China.”

Tan is a Silicon Valley fixture and former venture capitalist with over 40 years of experience in semiconductors and venture capital. His San Francisco-based venture firm, investment firms based in Hong Kong have steered money into a host of Chinese technology companies over the years. Tan is perhaps best known for his previous investment in Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), China’s largest chipmaker.

Tan has also drawn more pointed criticism over his previous role as chief executive of Cadence Design Systems, a California-based company that provides software for chip design. Last week, Cadence agreed to pay the U.S. government a $300 million fine for violating export controls after selling its chip design software to a Chinese university that also does business with China’s military.

Tan assumed Intel’s CEO role in March after the company’s board ousted his predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, in December. At the time of his appointment, Intel was facing steep competition from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest chipmaker, and had been unable to gain significant market share in artificial intelligence chips, an area that is the focus of a new global race in advanced semiconductors.

Intel is the last U.S.-headquartered company able to produce leading-edge chips. To help reverse Intel’s fortunes, Washington has doled out billions of dollars in subsidies and loans for the company. But Intel has still fallen far behind TSMC in most aspects of advanced chipmaking, and Tan has been under pressure from the start to turn the company around.

In July, Tan said Intel would be forced to stop developing its next-generation manufacturing technology if it failed to find a “significant external customer” to support it. That statement has only stoked speculation over what could happen if Intel were to cede the leading edge of semiconductor manufacturing to TSMC, which could have profound ramifications not just for the chip industry but for U.S. national security as well.

Tan has, meanwhile, launched an aggressive cost-cutting drive to bring Intel back to profitability, a move that has won some praise from investors but also further stirred concern about the company’s longer-term prospects.

That issue is what Cotton alludes to in his letter to Intel, where he said Tan’s associations raise the question of Intel’s ability “to fulfill these obligations.”

Intel and the White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Trump’s post. Intel’s stock price fell 3 percent in pre-market trading in New York on Thursday morning.