> RISC is China/Eastern

RISC-V was developed at UC Berkeley. It's roughly as Western as West realistically gets, short of being made in Hawaii.

> That's a geopolitical question

Sure, but that's not actually about where RISC-V is from. It's that it's a purposely open platform -- so much so that its governing body literally moved to Switzerland.

The reason it's a geopolitical question is more to do with what we did to their supply chains with sanctions on companies like Huawei and ZTE, and what COVID did to everyone's supply chains independently of that. Both of those things made it really evident that some domestic supply chains are critical. (On both sides -- see: the CHIPS Act)

Where RISC-V comes back in is that open source doesn't really have a functioning concept of export restrictions. Which makes it an attractive contingency plan to develop further in the event of sanctions happening again, since these measures can and have extended to chip licenses.

(Edit: I'm not saying any of this is mutually exclusive with valid concerns about Huawei, raised by various other sources. I'm less familiar with ZTE's history, but my point in either case is more of a practical one.)