> it doesn't seem likely that ARM will be getting any new license applicants anytime soon

Softbank's post-IPO business model for Arm is to move away from bespoke royalty-based licensing, standardize SoCs via a preferred partner like Mediatek, and demand a percentage of the sale price/value of final product.

Despite the lackadaisical Qualcomm Windows-on-Arm PC launch, Qualcomm has a huge pipeline in mobile and automotive, which should motivate support for Linux and virtualization with their gunyah hypervisor. Linux on Apple Silicon Macs can offer a point of reference for both macOS and non-Apple Arm PCs.

Post-apocalyptic Thinkpads are awesome resilience devices, engineering existence proofs, and inspiration for future US-manufactured computing devices.