[brudgers]

The fact that a chip fab is a state level asset suggests that one of the problems is that there are likely to be competing state level interests with a dog in the fight.

Or to put it another way, some of the difficulties are analogs to those of developing nuclear weapons. There are trust issues in the supply chain due to an adversarial aspect to the undertaking.

Or where does one buy the latest lithography hardware?

[spacemansam]

Oh wait - I didn't know this was the case. Is that the case in all countries with fabs (i.e. that they're state level/state controlled) ?