To steel man the argument, I think that there really is a Moore's Cliff coming. I don't think that resolution is going to matter as much, although process/design knowledge will still be a huge barrier. I don't see even 10A being as big a node as 14A or 2nm. Too many things fall apart all at once, and the cyclical nature of semi will raise it's bloody head above the industry as the AI trade bursts. So many $10Bs will be spent and margins will plummet... again, just in time for China to catch up.

Already, the big capabilities are becoming multi-layer/die integration. Whether it's BSPDN, stacked die, optical interconnects, etc it won't be as simple as Denard scaling. It will be dependent on experience and supply chains, which are harder to transfer than equipment or IP.

I do think the market for inference will drive a lot of innovation, and a lot of that will be at larger nodes. A single reticle die masked ROM with CIM can do 7B at 6nm. At 2-3nm you can do 27-32B which is a single expert or router. At that point there's not much reason to shrink for AI since it's mostly 1-hot die per token (except for the router). Update the parameters every 3-6mo when a new frontier comes out, and take the cost/power savings to the bank.