[LamaOfRuin]

From a lay observer point of view of the semiconductor industry of the last two decades, it seems entirely implausible they could do that quickly without just buying a company that was already working on it. And then, unless that company was big enough to already have a significant defensive patent portfolio, it's likely their efforts would be stymied in court for years if it was remotely successful.

The idea that even with expertise, the wins would be so much over what other companies that have hired/bought these companies have been designing for the last 10 years based on very similar requirements (the ones that wrote so much of the foundational research) also seems implausible.

c) It's not actually possible to plan investments at that level with anything more than a very vague direction you're aiming. If it is long term, then everything is changing in unpredictable ways before you get even 25% there, but if you throw so much money at the problem in order to try to solve it much more quickly you are disrupting global economic and geopolitical forces in ways that also can't be planned for.