Well, a couple of things: France =|= EU, which should be obvious. Also, you have to put 500 million in context: Liquid Death (canned H2O) has a valuation of 700 million USD, MS dumped 10 billion on OpenAI and Germany burned 500 million on a road toll system that cannot be built because the whole concept is illegal. Someone else already brought up Adam Newman. And now put that in relation to the budget of an entire nation state. Peanuts, actually.

Regarding those Intel chips: Which chips exactly caused the chip crisis? High end latest gen ones or older tech? And now you can guess on which chips the vast, vast majority of national defence hardware runs. That idea actually isn't to bad.