> They definitely did, Intel existing is probably an issue of national security at this point, if Intel fell then there'd be the risk of some other nation's company being part of the duopoly.

Mind elaborating? Who are the players in the duopoly?

We currently have an all American oligopoly on the CPU market - Intel, AMD, Apple(ARM) and Qualcomm(ARM).

There's hardly any non-American CPU designers out there

I'm not sure why Arm is in parenthesis twice, when it's a full-blown, non-American CPU designer on whose coat-tails Apple and Qualcomm have been riding.

Risc-V moved HQs to be a non-American CPU designer, but perhaps you don't find them credible (yet).

Apple and Qualcomm only use ARM ISA at this point.

And no, Apple and Qualcomm are the standard setters in ARM these days. Should they drop ARM for something else... ARM will be on the same trajectory where MIPS ended up.

RISC-V is just an ISA standard, the standard body is not a CPU designer in any shape or form.

Presumably referring to the logic foundry business where TSMC is the monopoly power and Intel, Samsung and SMIC are looking to turn it into a duopoly.

Or they could be referring to the Wintel monopoly (Windows+Intel), or the x86 duopoly (Intel+AMD), or the FPGA duopoly (Altera=>Intel + Xilinx=>AMD)...

Let's not forget GloFo although they are more interested in bulk at this point.mm

Global Foundries sent their EUV machine back (and paid a fat restocking fee to do it), they've stopped trying to compete at the leading edge of logic processes.

SMIC has a DUV multi-patterning 7 nm node which is already economically uncompetitive with EUV 7 nm nodes (except for PRC subsidies) and the economics of DUV only get worse further down, but at least they're trying and will certainly be the first client to use the Chinese EUV machines, whenever those come online.