I agree that dealing with China involves a geopolitical risk,...

I agree that dealing with China involves a geopolitical risk, and I'm not 100% comfortable with it myself. But the company's given reasons do make sense of such a decision. i.e. EM has put far more skin in the game to get AP to the finish post than any other FAB. And there has been quite a lot of effort and value that has been put in by EM. I recall being told several years ago that other FABs had to juggle to provide production time to AP 'as a good bet' that it would ultimately pay off for them, but it was not cheap for them to provide it, and their largesse would undoubtedly have had its limits. Unfortunately AP also could not afford to 'take as long as it took' to get all the trial and error work done to uncover and resolve all the problems that the task needed. EM clearly recognises the value proposition that AP's chips represent. And because it is China EM are not as likely to be under quite as much pressure as western FABS. But AP can also do business anywhere else they wish to. It is not an exclusive relationship. I could easily see that additional FABs would be keen to become manufacturing partners once the product is established. That would be the best of all possible worlds.

It is easy to say that 'everyone who is a big boy is in the know', but may I politely suggest that this is only fear inspired conjecture. It's easy to imagine that being true, but imagining is not a fact in its own right. You do not know that. I do not know that. If you base your investment strategy on ignoring what you are officially told is true in favour of what you imagine might be true, but cannot know, you just might be missing something important. That is not naivety, it is anti-naivety - imagining that the big boys know the opposite of what you know, so doing the most contrarian thing in order to outsmart the big boys. Good luck with that. DYOR.