> it's enough to give an enemy a bad time

That depends a lot on the objective, I think. The defenses against an enemy controlling the transalpine transportation axes are fairly strong. But I think this scenario gets talked up a lot for exactly that reason.

The defenses against an enemy controlling 80% of the population and 90% of the economy are much weaker. Then again, it might only take a few sysadmins armed with SQL queries to deal significant economic damage against any attacker.

> It would be much easier to just infiltrate the fab and replace stock going to an important destination.

True. And if I've understood the article correctly, no fabs would be changing location. RISC-V is an open source design, so the fabs in question would probably be located in the "enemy" countries anyway.

Switzerland is filthy rich, too. Private fortunes thought to rival or surpass the biggest public billionaires, money pipes throughout the world beyond measure — the result of centuries of diligently building a discrete but very real financial empire... all of that has to count for something in the age of PMC's and acts of surgical retaliation projecting force accross the globe.

Taking on a too-rich enemy in modern times is choosing an all-out, extremely mobile, stupidly costly, and above all likely painful war. You'll lose a lot at the hand of the best weapons and talents money can buy.

That's why an extremely indebted USA is still very valuable. Because they can park a few aircraft carriers off the coast of whomever they desire (although this may be changing, namely due to China).