It's actually a pretty big topic in legit altcoin projects, which try to implement Satoshi's original '1 CPU, 1 vote' idea as stated in the whitepaper:
This is a simplification of explanation not a promise. It is not like ASICs were invented after bitcoin invention. They existed ever since 1967.
Sure, but did SHA256 ASICs exist before 2009? I imagine if not, it was a pretty large bet starting SHA256-ASIC production back then, because if the Bitcoin project would have failed, all the R&D work and the cost for the chip production masks and whatnot (in the millions) would have been for nothing. I'm pretty sure when Bitcoin ASICs first came out,
BTC actually still suffered from a few, but very severe bugs, so it was not yet as 'set in stone' as today's 'immutable, secure L1'. I remember early versions of the codebase didn't even have tests and little structure in it.
But if SHA256 chips existed for some other purpose already, then I'm wondering why Satoshi and the early Bitcoin developer community didn't think those would be going to be used in the future for Bitcoin mining and driving out CPU miners rather quickly.
No SHA256 ASICs didn't exist back then but my point wasn't about their existence but the possibility of their existence. Satoshi surely know that CPU mining won't last long and other methods would replace it soon like GPUs, FPGA and eventually ASICs since they all existed way before bitcoin and were used in computationally intensive work similar to bitcoin mining. Ergo we shouldn't focus on the "1 CPU" 1 Vote quote so much since as I said it was a simplification.