[Zigurd]

Very much depends on the meaning of hopeless. State of the art power management and/or performance? Hopeless.

Taking this on outside of a consortium and using a novel "dynamic translation" architecture? Way not optimal.

Adequate performance for high-security requirements? Not so hopeless. Building and operating secure systems will costs thousands to tens of thousands per seat, so a few hundreds of dollars to know your CPUs are not back-doored is cheap in the greater scheme.

It could succumb to a wide range of reasons for failure. But making an CPU that doesn't have to be price/performance competitive is not out of reach for any of dozens of nations, if they feel a need to do it.