[Night_Thastus]

Leading-edge semiconductors is a hell of a business. It requires so, so much investment and time and if you can't comprehensively beat the competition your product is almost worthless.

Companies and governments alike have tried to enter the industry and failed over and over. And even staying in it was a struggle for Intel once the pressure was on.

I'm not sure if or how that will ever change. Unless someone comes up with a complete revolution for chip manufacturing that makes the process far easier and simpler than anything we have today, while keeping close to the same performance - I don't think it will. Or if we move to some completely new technology with no similarities at all to silicon - so that new blood can make significant progress.