Yeah but in a war, be it a trade war or kinetic one, against a power WHO HAS modern chips and can process data and intelligence faster, who has better leverage? The one with cutting edge tech, or the one with "okay" tech?
Seeing how the orange bafoon slapped the EU around with his trade war and received no retaliation that could cause even paint in return, I assume the answer is obvious.
Another point being how Ukraine can beat Russia in drone warfare simply because they have access to the superior tech of all western allied nations despite making lower numbers than Russia which makes more but can't easily get embargo chips.
>and there are fabs in Europe that could make them.
Which EU fabs make 14++nm CPUs and GPUs? Which EU domestic CPUs and GPUs IP designs are there at the moment that can be fabbed in case of emergency without parts or IP from rivals?
The truth is EU is painfully absent from this field. Sure, in theory they can duct tape together some RISC-V CPU and some ARM MALI GPU production on Dresden 16nm fabs, in case of a war, but since the EU never built and shipped a commercial domestic CPU and GPU from scratch in the last 20+ years, it's not gonna be as easy as turning a screw, as it is for nations that ship new cutting edge compute chips every year: US, Korea, Taiwan and to an extent Japan and China. When you've been out of the game for so long, you get rusty and comebacks are slow and painful. EU would take decades to catch up and rebuild this industry in case of a war cut them off from these parts. It's basically another supply chain vulnerability it failed to address.