The most salient issue with Intel in the past 10 year was their constant delay of the 10nm node process. While TMSC was constantly pushing down the Node size, Intel struggled and ceded a lot of ground to AMD & Apple. At the same time Intel struggled to develop a competitive 5G radio, and GPU.
These are all downstream of R&D. If your fab cannot shrink it's node size, then you won't get the most profitable orders.
I’m not sure it would have made a difference if they hit 10nm faster. Apple has always wanted to make its own chips. Some marginal efficiencies wouldn’t dissuade them from investing in themselves. And it’s not like Intel was going to start a consumer PC business…
What you’re describing is in the R&D area and also not physically dependent on being colocated in a fab. So we should have an easier time finding that talent, although we’re probably underpaying them now, as you point out.