As other commenters I'm reminded of the classic RIM roadrunner effect - the decapitated chicken that keeps running.

Another thought though: is it completely unthinkable for Intel to pull an AMD themselves and spin out their fabs and rely on whoever has the best fabs out there? I mean - if they are years late with something that is already outdated there are not too many downsides to it.. Next-gen process nodes are now so delayed that they might as well use the time until then to retarget their designs for TSMC/Samsung.