Not only that, by the time they figure how to do it the rest of the world will have moved on by at least 2 generations. SMIC has announced 14nm (but shipments in volume aren't clear), TSMC will have 5nm chips shipping in volume by the end of the month.

how does that matter? SMIC had the 7nm news recently, not sure about that but even if it is 14nm, can't they throw money on the problem and get something to start with?

they don't have to achieve A100 levels in the first go, even Rpi level chips should be enough to give them experience

I guess they are not able to buy the tooling (think ASML EUV) to make advanced node either. So, they’d also need to throw a shitload of time and money at this.

This is one of those problems that “throwing money at it” doesn’t speed it up. China has been throwing money at the problem for over a decade and they’re still behind.

That's what they've been trying to do, of course, but so far they haven't really succeeded yet.

Taiwan is pretty close to China...

Those fabs aren't going to survive an invasion.

Literally all nvidia has is the circuit design. They do not do any fabrication, and they get all their stuff made in taiwan.

If china had the layout, they would just get it made in taiwan.