Isn't this because Intel under-invested in R&D over the last several years and Gelsinger is (rightly, it seems) saying he needs to invest a bunch of money to catch up?
It's not just R&D. They are opening their chip making facilities to the designs of others and increasing their ability to produce chips. All of that takes capital investments and it's a new line of business. Much of this isn't R&D but about building out capacity and processes for this new area.
I don't think they under-invested with sheer magnitude of money. The money is plentiful at Intel. It seems like they need better leadership, which hopefully they have in Gelsinger.
It wasn't under-investment, it was lack of focus. They spent their time running after new growth opportunities at the cost of their core business. They wanted to do IoT (low power they're not particularly good at and the margins are awful), 5G (they had some success here) and autonomous driving (some success but still comparatively tiny). Meanwhile their core business started to fail.