When Xi publicly told his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027 earlier this year (meaning there was probably a non-public memo demanding readiness by 2025), he made things political.

Taiwan doesn’t have many natural resources and their government since the 70s has deliberately poured money and legislation into their chip industry to make it so valuable that other countries would be forced to come to their aid if they are attacked.

The idea that hardware and politics are strictly separate has always been a fantasy.

Hardware.

M-series chips bake in hardware support for x86 memory model, expensive flag calculations, and probably a few other things. Doing these without hardware is a lot harder and won’t ever be as performant.