The USA and China are engaged in a battle to gain self-sufficiency from one another in strategic technologies, and also to establish global leadership. Much of this activity has focused on semiconductors. China has a huge decade-long programme to build up key chip capabilities and IPR, and recently, the USA’s CHIPS Act set aside funds worth $280bn to increase national capabilities in chip foundries and innovation. One way to increase a base of innovation and technology is to adopt open approaches, and despite the risks this entails in terms of IPR ownership (as highlighted by O-RAN), a degree of open source is increasingly popular with governments looking to accelerate hi-tech progress. The open source processor architecture, RISC-V, is gaining some…