Donald Trump has called for the immediate resignation of Intel’s new chief executive officer, Lip-Bu Tan, over allegations of conflict of interest.

In a message posted to his Truth Social network on Thursday, the former U.S. President said: “The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem.”

Trump’s four-word tweet, so to speak, provided no additional context as to the basis of his claims against Tan, who became Intel’s CEO earlier this year, nor why the U.S. presidential candidate believes the former venture capitalist and semiconductor industry veteran is unfit to lead Intel.

Still, the outburst from Trump was not entirely out of the blue. Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas had also raised the alarm in a letter to Intel’s board chair, Frank Yeary, last week. In the letter, Cotton cited Tan’s long history of investing in Chinese tech companies and “professed ties to the Chinese Communist Party” as a cause for “concern about the security and integrity of Intel’s operations.”

Tan, a Silicon Valley fixture who has lived in the U.S. for over 30 years, is also the founder of a San Francisco-headquartered investment firm that he also runs out of a Hong Kong-based holding company that has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Chinese tech companies. Among these investments are stakes in Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), China’s largest chipmaker.

Tan has also been a past CEO of California-based chip design software maker Cadence Design Systems. Cadence, a potential rival to Intel in the lucrative business of providing software to chipmakers, only last week admitted to violating U.S. export controls on China after it was found to have sold its design software to a Chinese university with ties to the Chinese military.

Senator Cotton, in his letter to Intel, did not mention Trump, but the fact that the former president has repeatedly made trade and technology issues with China a litmus test for his political prospects since leaving the White House bodes poorly for Tan, at least if the Intel CEO remains on Trump’s radar.

Intel and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but in pre-market trading in New York, Intel’s stock had fallen by 3 percent by Thursday morning after Trump’s demand for Tan’s resignation.

Tan became Intel’s CEO in March this year after Intel’s board of directors decided to replace him with Pat Gelsinger in December last year. The move to bring in Tan, who had previously headed private equity firm Artic Ventures, was the culmination of a tumultuous year for the Silicon Valley company as it had fallen far behind global market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in cutting-edge chipmaking.

Intel, which is the world’s largest chipmaker by revenue but was once far ahead of TSMC in process technology, has so far been effectively frozen out of a new boom in artificial intelligence chips as it plays catch-up. The company has been given billions of dollars in government subsidies and loans in an effort to jumpstart its own efforts to lead in next-generation chipmaking, with the aim of once again enabling Intel to be able to make the most advanced semiconductors in the U.S.

Intel remains the only U.S.-based company with the ability to produce advanced semiconductors in-house, but a shake-up is underway. Washington has recently unveiled a number of measures to wean the U.S. off its reliance on foreign-made chips, especially those made in Taiwan and South Korea, by encouraging homegrown semiconductor manufacturing.

Intel is one of the leading beneficiaries of this policy shift, but there are already clear signs that the company is struggling. In July, Tan warned that unless Intel had “a significant external customer” to invest in the further development of its next-generation manufacturing technology, Intel may be forced to stop its development altogether.

Intel’s exit would essentially leave TSMC with a monopoly in leading-edge chipmaking and could have grave consequences for not just the chip industry but for U.S. national security.

Tan’s warning followed moves by the Intel CEO to slash costs in an effort to boost the company’s profitability. These moves, which have been welcomed by some in the financial markets, are on top of the string of challenges Intel has faced in recent months that include supply chain bottlenecks, which have affected both the company’s production and its customers’ sales.