Regarding the fabs (well... fab - not good), GlobalFoundries Dresden, and regarding IP, ARM. Or old AMD or Intel designs, because intellectual property goes right out of the window in a war.
Which was the last ARM CPU that's been full-stack designed and made in the EU, that they can pull out of the mothball and iterate on if need be?
Just because you own an ARM license and know how to make one in a lab or university research group, doesn't mean you know how to make and ship competitive chips as the nations that actually do this for a living daily.
> Or old AMD or Intel designs
Firstly, where will the EU get old Intel and AMD designs? Are the Verilog files, netlists and photomasks just floating around?
Secondly, if you need to bootleg the obsolete 20 year old designs of your adversary to fight them with, then you already lost the war before you even started. Which is why the EU lets itself bullied and pushed around by everyone. You have no sovereignty when you're at the mercy of everyone for the vital things you need.
Intel or AMD IP would need to be stolen somehow. GlobalFoundries might still have some old AMD materials around. Yeah, this does seem really difficult - it would be easier and less risky to run x86 code on ARM if necessary.
Lastly, a factor of 5 or so in computing power does not decide a war.
That's not enough. You need teams that have experience and history of shipping complex full stack designs from start to finish, because that's what the US (and China) has, but the EU does not. Thinking you can just turn a screw and have those teams get proficient and catch up with decades of lost experience in shipping complex silicon designs is wishful thinking.
At least the US had enough self reflection and foresight to realize they de-industrialized too much and so have on-shored a lot of manufacturing back, from cutting edge semi to ship building, using their Korean and Taiwanese partners. The EU has not and remains much more venerable, with its only strategy being wishful thinking, hopes and dreams that the status quo and favorable alliances last forever, which history proves they don't.
>Lastly, a factor of 5 or so in computing power does not decide a war.
What about 5x in everything else, not just compute?