The payments are tied to real milestones like building fabs. Intel cannot spend the money on organizational inertia because that wouldn't get them the money.
It doesn't matter how badly they want to sell the chips if they don't have the money to build the fabs in the first place. That's where Intel is at right now. Building fabs is incredibly expensive and they need the money upfront.
You can get a loan against the value of a purchase contract if you have a firm purchase contract (i.e. from the government) and a convincing plan on how to manufacture to that price point...
