Atom really isn't that low volume. They sell a ton of them in Chromebooks. It's definitely way more volume than Core Celeron and Pentium.
I suppose they could make a Rocket Lake chiplet at Samsung 14 nm aimed at some of i3 and Core Celeron/Pentium but i3's frequency today is pretty high, it starts at 4.2 turbo and goes up to 4.6.
Except if in six months nothing has surfaced, then it was a farce to begin with. Samsung is a major conglomerate. They make up nearly a quarter of South Korea's GDP. The Korean press much like their North Korean counterparts are know for spitting BS out to boost stock prices and public interest in their home grown companies. Realistically, how many Atom powered units are being sold new per month in relation to more powerful x86 offerings such as the i3?
Intel has 16 fabs. You honestly think they're going to pay out the nose to a third party or convert more of their fabs into modern ones to handle the load all the way into 2023? If you seriously think Intel would rely on another company to make their 14nm, I've got a bridge to sell you.
These rumors began in relation to Intel having trouble producing enough of the chips OEMs wanted. OEMs are buying trays of performance minded chips. I5s, i7s, i9s, Xeons. Not pithy junk. These were also debunked by Intel within the last 48 hours. Are we not going to believe them? If you're old enough to remember back just about a decade ago, you'd recall people had trust issues of chips being made in various parts of the world versus the US. This is atop sharing IP with Samsung.