> The US can probably consider most-all ARM IP to be dual use technology and immediately deny use of it.

The US (certainly the current US) can do that, but (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings):

“Arm Holdings plc (formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a Japanese-owned British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England”

There are still ARM offices in the US in which their work, IP, etc would be subject to export restrictions.

ARM in stock listed in New York, it cant avoid US assertions

So what, there's nothing done in America that can't be brought back to Cambridge or London just as easily as we offshored it.

If Europe is making a serious investment then it has more than enough power to say "you'll get the contract if you divest of X,Y,Z"

ARM is a British company. We are in Europe.

It was founded in Britain, but it is a Japanese company ATM as per it's SoftBank ownership.

So what? Japan are Europe's enemy now? Could the EU not just buy 25% or something?

Its specifically Softbank which might be japanese but its very much aligned with US and VC funds. It might as well be VC fund.

So what? What's the scenario here?

The USA pressures Japan to stop selling licences to European Fabs? Why, what would push them to such extremes?

Fabs can still produce those current designs (they just don't have licences). Now Europe can buy SoftBank out, or Britain can just walk into ARM Cambridge and say it's been sequested for the war effort.

Given ARM is mostly an IP bsaed company that wouldn't really work. For reference just look at what happened with ARM's china susidiary with which this basically happened.

ARM China is a sales office. Not the same thing at all. If a design is made in a British office of a British company, 'by hook or by crook' the state can gain access to it. That's the hard, perhaps slightly uncomfortable truth.

Of course it would only ever come to this if softbank refused to sell and there was some national security angle.

If ARM want to close their office here, then the state can hire all their engineers and offer immunity/void on any NDA they've signed with ARM, if anything that's actually the most desirable outcome.

Again we're talking about things that simply aren't going to happen, and if they do there are much much bigger problems.

And non-Apple Silicon is British?

ARM Holdings is British. Anyone making ARM cores (Apple, Qualcomm, Amazon’s Graviton…) is paying licensing fees to a British company.

Arm even tried to cancel Qualcomm’s licensing agreement back in the fall. Using RISC V entirely circumvents not only royalty payments, but legal battles like that (frivolous or not).

And ARM makes reference designs which most ARM chips just use.

I'm all in for RISC-V, but ARM Holdings is British (and owned by the Japanese SoftBank group). ASML is in the The Netherlands. And there are some European ARM CPU vendors (NXP, ST Microelectronics, etc.). So Europe could also standardize on ARM without sovereignty issues?

Why risking doing that if you can go to ASML and those vendors to manucature you RISC which isnt owned by Softbank…

I think we should definitely invest in RISC-V, open is preferable, especially in a continent-wide initiative. I’m just contesting that the US could unilaterally sabotage ARM use in Europe.

Because almost all software runs on arm today, almost none (comparatively) runs on risc-v.

Or perhaps because ARM is miles ahead of risc-v today.