Comment by kortilla

You’re confusing two independent things. There are simple processes that are extremely capital intensive with long lead times and then there are complex processes that require lots of R&D and industry secrets. Memory is the former in the chip world.

Other examples from outside of tech of easy but capital intensive processes are power generation and railroads. Very easy to do, but easy to end up broken by overbuilding for demand that fails to materialize or stay stable for the duration of your financing.