[RickS]

Same way it does with nukes. It's Mutually Assured Destruction. If there's a credible promise that attack will result in a total boardwipe, there's strong incentive not to attack, because then China's fucked too. It's crude but it mostly works.

What's interesting is that I don't hear much about China spinning up chip fabs. I haven't gone looking, and I imagine they're doing it, the way we are with the CHIPS act etc. If china could get within a few notches of SOTA (in both nm and throughput), their attack position would be much stronger, but it'd still be a generationally brutal experience for most of humanity.