Dutch Align with US Export Controls on Some ASML Chip Tools
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And it is arguably the most complicated machine ever made. 50,000 times a second, the EUV lithography machine hits a 25 micron drop of molten tin that is moving at 70 meters per second with two co-ordinated lasers, the first hit to change the shape of the drop of tin in exactly the right way, the second hit to vaporise it, creating Extreme Ultraviolet Light at the right wavelength to etch chip designs onto silicon at "5nm process" sizes. Some labs can cobble together something similar as a proof of concept, but not well enough to make it feasible for mass production of chips.
Video about the light souce - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw
No one else in the world is able to make these machines. If you buy one it costs $150m and gets shipped to you in forty containers on specially adapted planes. Very few firms have the resources/know how to even run the machines - which is what makes TSMC so important.
It’s not really “one firm in the Netherlands”, it’s a global collaboration that goes back to the 1990s. Intel was involved from the beginning, they just dropped the ball.
Yep, even on the optics side (IIRC Zeiss, Nikon and Samsung are big players in the optical side...)
Every time anyone mentions ASML, I see comments of adulation. It's a very human tendency to hero-worship, especially fanboys who only recognize the name but don't understand the history or the ecosystem.
It's useful to remember that ASML didn't outcompete rivals through brilliant innovation in a heated market race. Instead it won mostly by being the last one standing. All the other players dropped out. Nikon and Canon made strategic decisions not to pursue EUV because it was too risky and expensive. ASML, a small Phillips spinoff, couldn't do it alone either. It took two decades and billions of investments backed by Intel and TSMC to keep ASML going before the first breakthrough -- it was a lot of persistence and incrementalism. ASML was essentially a side bet/strategic hedge by Intel, TSMC and Samsung.
(all this is covered on Asianometry)
People associate ASML with the Netherlands, but it would not have been possible without the massive contributions of the Americans, the Taiwanese, the Germans, and the Japanese.
It's like Grigori Perelman and the Poincare conjecture -- he didn't accept the Fields Medal for it because he felt that he just happened to the last person to put the pieces together (he was building on work by Thurston, Hamilton, etc.).
We see ASML as this amazing Dutch company, but we forget all the other players were critical to making this singular company possible (only because it happened to be the only one standing, not because no one else is capable -- this is the great misconception).
And being the last one standing must mean something - good at negotiating with funders, tenacious, perceived as a good long term bet etc.
ASML is truly an international integration company. This type of integration requires deep expertise and tacit knowledge. But they don't manufacture most of their critical components.
The way most narratives make it sound is that ASML is out of this world. No, it is not. It is unique because it is the only one standing in the market, after a 2 decade period of investment.
It has a compelling moat, but that moat is not entirely technical (though it is substantially technical -- there is a lot of tacit knowledge on integration at that level of precision). It's the supplier network lock in, and sunk cost lockin from chipmakers.
If the Dutch want to design a new EUV light source, they can probably find someone to do it. If they want to find someone to grind mirrors to match those from Zeiss, maybe they can find someone who worked on the ESO or similar, and similarly with everything else. Think of it like how the F-35 is a Boeing project, even though many companies make components.
The integrator is the maker, not the component manufacturers.
I don't think the US could have made something like ASML. Baumol effect due to the successful firms, different attitudes, etc. There's after all a reason why the others dropped out.
I saw one thing that made it obvious to me that they were only people who could possibly develop a certain technology which hasn't been commercialized. Basically, they were doing research on details that they from their analysis could determine were necessary, but which nobody else had even thought about yet. It took me half an hour of a guy who had done his PhD on it explaining until I understood why they needed it. I think his work was paid for by industry though.
They were the last one standing because of their brilliant innovation. It was order of magnitudes harder to get EUV from the lab to an actual working machine than anybody thought in the beginning. There is a reason others gave up.
That said, this isn’t something unique to ASML. It’s just how global companies operate, especially in hardware. Take Tesla as an example—these companies are inherently multinational. They rely on acquired patents, parts and expertise from around the world, and hire international talent to stay competitive.
As someone else pointed out, it’s interesting how often this comes up in ASML discussions here, especially from American users. Maybe it’s because admitting reliance on another country—particularly those “arrogant Europeans” Americans often feel both superior and insecure about—kind of messes with the U.S. dominance narrative.
And each wafer goes through multiple cycles of this, so not only does the machine rapidly create features at the nanonmetre scale with incredible accuracy, but again and again in exactly the same place after removing and returning the wafer.
Oh, and the wafer stage is pretty fun too; it uses an electrostatic chuck that induces a charge in the wafer and therefore holds it firmly in place without needing any kind of suction that could distort the wafer.
Promotional fly through video from ASML here: https://youtu.be/h_zgURwr6nA
Asianometry video about the stage: https://youtu.be/1fOA85xtYxs
Another short video about the light source: https://youtu.be/9VDJMivfhGU
I dispute that this is simply what sets TSMC apart. The process of designing transistors and chip "IP" (the term used) such as 2.5D stacking technologies and the like (which is where coordination with EDA companies like Synopsys, Cadence, and etc. comes in) is just one thing. Then to prepare the photomask (I'm sure there are partners, but still), and operate the whole clean room facility around the input and output of wafers and other materials into these ASML/other fabrication machines is another thing.
This is false.
> To address the challenge of EUV lithography, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories were funded in the 1990s to perform basic research into the technical obstacles. The results of this successful effort were disseminated via a public/private partnership Cooperative R&D Agreement (CRADA) with the invention and rights wholly owned by the US government, but licensed and distributed under approval by DOE and Congress.[3] The CRADA consisted of a consortium of private companies and the Labs, manifested as an entity called the Extreme Ultraviolet Limited Liability Company (EUV LLC).[4]
> In 2001 SVG was acquired by ASML, leaving ASML as the sole benefactor of the critical technology.
Unless the situation has changed, the IP is still owned by the US government, and is licensed to ASML through their acquisition of Silicon Valley Group.
"By 2018, ASML succeeded in deploying the intellectual property from the EUV-LLC after several decades of developmental research, with incorporation of European-funded EUCLIDES (Extreme UV Concept Lithography Development System) and long-standing partner German optics manufacturer ZEISS and synchrotron light source supplier Oxford Instruments..."
That explicitly says that the IP is with EUV-LLC (edit: which is of U.S. origin).
"The CRADA consisted of a consortium of private companies and the Labs, manifested as an entity called the Extreme Ultraviolet Limited Liability Company (EUV LLC)."
Again, your first quote explicitly states that EUV-LLC was American. The second quote refers to the "Labs", which in this case were the Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, and Berkeley National Laboratories.
Apple may have developed the M4 from the ground up but they still licensed the ISA from ARM.
"To access EUV technology, Intel in 1997 formed the EUV LLC, which entered into a cooperative R&D agreement (CRADA) with DOE. As part of this agreement, Intel and its partners would pay $250 million over three years to cover the direct salary costs of government researchers at the national labs and acquire equipment and materials for the labs, as well as cover the costs of its own researchers dedicated to the project. In return, the consortium would have exclusive rights to the technology in the EUV lithography field of use. At the time, it was the largest CRADA ever undertaken."
In return, the consortium would have exclusive rights to the technology in the EUV lithography field of use
Curious how that happened.
All NatLab-Private partnerships have this kind of a rider.
ASML is already starting another partnership with LLNL on next-gen EUV.
AMD produces their own x86 under IP licensed by Intel (and vice versa).
In any case if the US adrenaline fueled diplomacy, starts violating hundreds of years old borders of it's allies, respect for ambiguous IP Laws, will be pretty low in the list of priorities. :-)
The details have never been disclosed but it is well known that this agreement fell within the domain of national security and export controls.
Here's a press release [1] directly from ASML that references these export controls. Even though this PR actually relaxing DUV controls with respect to the U.S., it reaffirms that "EUV systems are also subject to license requirements."
[1]: https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2024/dutch-gover...
In return, the consortium would have exclusive rights to the technology in the EUV lithography field of use
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories were funded in the 1990s to perform basic research into the technical obstacles. The results of this successful effort were disseminated via a public/private partnership Cooperative R&D Agreement (CRADA) with the invention and rights wholly owned by the US government, but licensed and distributed under approval by DOE and Congress.
ASML acquired SVGI (Silicon Valley Group, doesn't seem to have been created as a licensing vehicle, apparently founded in 1977), but according to wikipedia it already had access to the technology (SVGI, Intel, and some other US chip manufacturers had access to the tech).
Nowhere in any of the press articles about the acquisition they mention EUV as being a factor (seems like standard industry consolidation instead). If anything they were really far from delivering EUV at the time (it took close to 20y).
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/13/1212604208/asml-euv-extreme-u...
The supply chain for iPhones is heavily dependent on Chinese manufacturing.
We wouldn't normally expect Tim Cook to kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party, though.
Why wouldn't we? They already do, and quite a bit.
They store Chinese user data exclusively in China on Chinese servers run by Chinese companies despite the obvious implication that the state has eyes into that data.
They censor apps out of the app store that violate Chinese policies and comply with requests for censorship, automatically deleting VPNs that could be used to bypass the firewall or news apps that could access free information. They censor information on Tianenman Square protests, and Hong Kong democracy.
They have modified iCloud encryption and air-drop settings to allow China to bypass them and limit time durations to make them less effective as tools in protest organization.
They make investments into Chinese companies, they maintain quiet neutrality on sensitive subjects that would imperil their relations with the state, they adapt to their markets and acquiesce their territorially disputed maps to China's requests, etc.
Without the American companies not sure the benefits would be the same to the Netherlands or to ASML.
But there are still benefits to NL since China is their adversary too.
> VELDHOVEN, the Netherlands — To win U.S. clearance in the purchase of Silicon Valley Group Inc., officials at ASM Lithography Holding N.V. agreed to a number of restrictions and obligations aimed at protecting lens technology and maintaining operations in the United States. But the Dutch company's CEO today said many of those requirements are compatible with ASML's original goals in buying SVG.
> ASML today announced it had finally cleared U.S. review of its planned purchase of San Jose-based SVG about seven months after announcing plans to acquire the lithography supplier for $1.6 billion in stock. Completion of the merger had been stalled for several months because of concerns about U.S. national security and protection of defense-related technologies. The U.S. government agreement now clears the way for ASML to complete its takeover of SVG within the next few weeks, according to officials in Veldhoven (see today’s story).
> “Clearly any CEO would like a completely free hand, with no obligations,” said ASML chief executive officer Doug Dunn, during a conference call today following the announcement of the agreement. Dunn said a free hand was “never going to be the case with this particular merger/takeover. The U.S. government took a very strong interest in this because, in their opinion, it very clearly effected national security.”
> Topping the list of requirements in the agreement is a promise by ASML to make a “good faith effort” to sell SVG's Tinsley Laboratories subsidiary within six months of completing the acquisition of Silicon Valley Group. Tinsley's lens-polishing technology was one of the major concerns blocking ASML from finishing its purchase of SVG.
The article continues: https://www.eetimes.com/what-asml-agreed-to-do-to-win-u-s-ap...
"U.S. Undersecretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said, “if the EUV technology proves viable, ASML has agreed to build a factory in the U.S., similar to its Netherlands facility, as well as to establish an American research and development center. The factory will supply 100 percent of all ASML's sales in the United States.”"
Minoz said ASML has “agreed to help facilitate periodic reviews among the Euclides EUV program members and U.S. manufacturers.” Euclides is a Europe-based research effort supported by the European Community and based primarily at ASML's R&D facilities in Eindhoven. “Collaborative participation on a pre-competitive basis among these leading lithography tool suppliers is the best approach for strengthening the overall technology and assuring its international acceptance,”
We also love it when our government takes marching orders from the US.
Who knows. In the last batch of negotiations they never made the deal public. These deals get made by elites and the public never learns the details.
FWIW this is not a very common ambition people have here in NL. Besides the implied blatant corruption, which I don't think is the case here, I strongly doubt you can bribe any Dutch executive with something as uncool as a bought Harvard admission.
That said, its a price we should pay instead of relying on the US as a partner.
It's true that Europe and Canada need to invest more in defense, but the balance is currently 755 billion USD (US) vs. 430 billion USD (EU) [1]. So it's certainly not like the MAGA rhetoric pretends. The US has the benefit of being a large nuclear power, but for a long time the US preferred being the nuclear protector to avoid too much proliferation on the continent.
Another annoying part of the 'they gotta pay up' Trump/MAGA discourse is that it's starting to sound like a mob wanting protection money. This is not how the NATO agreement works. Countries have to spend 2% of their GDP on defense, but it's not a payment to the US. They could buy Saab Grippens if they wanted to.
[1] https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pd...
It is still sad though. At any rate, it fits the pattern. During his first term he was also more interested in cozying up with autocrats.
History called our bluff. Event after event, Financial crisis (remember that?), the Brexit implosion of the UK, the Syrian war / migration crisis, the Pandemic, the Russian invasion, the Trumpist implosion of the US, the Adtech invasion, the Energy transition disruption from China etc. An endless list of setbacks that is not going to end anytime soon.
The old continent is shaken to the very core but somehow we are still in the denial phase.
I am not sure we are in denial. Have you seen defense spending since the invasion of Ukraine? Moscow failed blackmailing member states using gas. There was pretty good collective purchasing and distribution of COVID vaccinations, etc.
It's just a very slow process with 27 member states. But it seems that every crisis so far as accelerated European integration, which is a win.
There is indeed some evidence of this but this is not a cause to celebrate.
It is a reactive response and minimalist in scope. Once the crisis is somehow mitigated, everybody is back singing their old tunes. E.g., the various proclamations for banking and capital markets union are still in deep freeze, two decades after the financial crisis. The first response to the Covid and migrant crises was to close internal borders etc.
> It's just a very slow process with 27 member states.
Yes, and we should always celebrate and prioritise preserving that individuality - when it is not hindering the collective survival of our cultures and values.
The beauty of the European project is that it doesnt follow a known pattern. It must invent the needed mechanisms. At this juncture it feels there is a need for drastic such invention. To stop running after disasters and have some confidence in our future.
If that no longer holds, then we enter a new era where non-proliferation will be history.
Many of the countries already have certified delivery platforms, or have ordered them.
Of course, we're treading in new waters and it's completely unknown if any existing contracts and treaties will be honoured anymore, but that concern will be secondary to this, I think.
I say it is a secondary concern because 1. basically any European nation can put together a delivery system, ballistic or cruising, should they have to; and 2. creating the weapon itself is not really that big of an undertaking for a modern high-technology nation state level actor.
YouTube channels that follow the Russian narrative suddenly amplify this and pivoted from "the US is to blame" to "the EU is to blame".
The US narrative (at least online) seems to shift similarly: The US wasn't that important for the conflict, it is the Brits, the French and the Eastern European states who are the real hawks and who have to pay for the war.
Since the EU will be left out of talks between Trump and Putin, one wonders what the game is here and if secret agreements have already been made.
This is defeatist. Europe isn't bound by talks it's left out of.
With the full text of the law implemented, several of these companies came up with compliance plans that don’t run afoul of the letter of the law, but the EC has repeatedly and continued to say “not good enough”, effectively inserting itself in the design process of new products and services from these companies going forward.
I’m against using NATO Article 5 as a bargaining chip too, but seeing what popular support crappy extremely targeted and extremely bureaucratically-minded laws like this has, has me questioning how much the EU is really an ally these days. It’s a given that a lot of you feel this way about the election of Donald Trump (twice), so I get it, but it cuts both ways across the Atlantic right now.
Reality is the value that the US brings is lower than it was. Ukraine has chewed up the old Soviet-era WW2 style tank divisions, but we’ve also seen that 4th generation fighters can’t survive in contested airspace and traditional Navy ships need to stay offshore (for now) to avoid being sunk by drone jetskis. Kinda a problem where we have limited inventory of 5th generation aircraft in either of our air forces.
The Navy sort of figured this out, but instead of building submarines built stealth ships with no weapons.
We need a reappraisal of US military force structure, based on the technology of 2026 vs 1986, as we’re on the path to end up like the Russians.
Starting to sound like a mob? He's been at this for his whole adult life.
I'm sceptical Russia has this kind of power anymore, beyond being a proxy for China..
Honestly it feels like the US is also becoming a Russian sattelite with Trump & Elon having quiet gettogethers w Putin.
5% is what Sweden needed in the 1980s to defend itself from the whole Soviet Union + Warsaw Pact, without the EU and without NATO.
More powers involved the better for me even as an American.
I don't think this is really good for the US or anybody else in the long term.
Europe should arm up, but US should cultivate a friendly relationship. If Europe would arm up and the US keeps pushing it'll either end up with escalation or US will have to start dismantling European cohesion, both out comes would be bloody.
Plus, If this tragedy happens, China would have an easier time dominating.
Plenty of countries don't think the same things and are not at war, and they're not even allies...
Russia is already in that position, so you are already dealing with an assertive opponent who only believe in power. And you got war.
So I'm not saying that Putin's rhetoric is correct. but it is a fact that it causes war. In Europe's case it's avoidable if you don't go that route.
The sensible thing would be to pull NATO back to more reasonable boundaries and leave the Russians alone. Maybe ally with them to oppose the Chinese or support India against China. Point them East instead of forcing them to militarise to the West.
What actually happened only really makes sense in context of the famous and rather concerning Trump-Biden debate. If that is the quality of the US's diplomatic head then it is easy to explain why the US policy went so far astray.
Without NATO more countries than Ukraine and Georgia would be at risk of war with Russia.
Russia is not going to ally with the US against China even if we let them rape and murder Ukraine to their black hearts content. They want to dominate Europe and share the values of our authoritarian adversaries.
The sensible thing would be to bleed Russia to death. Regardless of whether they manage to hold on to some part of Ukraine for a while, Russia's ability to threaten their other neighbors and project conventional power beyond their borders is being rapidly, irreversibly ground down. Their low birth rate, and declines in their educational system and industrial base, are going to take them off the board as significant players for decades. Most of their major infrastructure and industrial plant is either a remnant of Soviet times or was built largely by foreign experts who have now left for good; there just aren't many young Russians left who still know how to build anything.
Russia has nothing that we need. China can be contained without any help from Russia. China isn't self sufficient in energy or food, and are facing their own demographic time bomb. So it's enough to keep them bottled up behind the first island chain and prevent them from securing their sea lines of communication. Keep the pressure on and eventually they'll have another revolution or civil war; those have been a frequent occurrence throughout Chinese history. As for India, sure let's have good relations with them but they're going to pursue their own interests and have zero interest in being sucked into some kind of entangling alliance.
This does nothing to address the core issue of Russia viewing over 100 million Europeans across more than 10 countries as "lost colonies" that must be reconquered and subjugated under a Russian supremacist ideology.
It is us, not Russia, that must be left alone. In February 2022, European tanks did not roll into Russia; Russian tanks rolled into Europe.
Disagreement?
People do that all the time.
To avoid this outcome being common, we created a monopoly on violence inside states so disagreements have to be solved via courts and not violence.
We don't have this in geo politics.
There is no reason for EU-US war, as there is no possibility of gaining anything. Neither can invade the territory of the other.
Militarism and aggression from the EU would presumably be directed east.
> In 1997, ASML began studying a shift to using extreme ultraviolet and in 1999 joined a consortium, including Intel and two other U.S. chipmakers, in order to exploit fundamental research conducted by the US Department of Energy. Because the CRADA it operates under is funded by the US taxpayer, licensing must be approved by Congress. It collaborated with the Belgian IMEC and Sematech and turned to Carl Zeiss in Germany for its need of mirrors.[25]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding
Before aiming to not be pushovers, EU should probably study the history of their own companies.
No. ASML started as a spinoff of ASMI and Philips in 1984. It became hugely successful and effectively a global monopoly in chip production before any of its EUV products shipped.
Also, taxpayer money funds lots of research everywhere, and this is then used by companies to make money. Most of that research is public, done at universities. That the US chose to stick an "ours!!" label on some of it doesn't really make that research more special than other taxpayer funded research, in moral terms.
No, it's not.
It's ASML looking out for its largest customer. It's Amsterdam looking out for its shipping lanes, as well as for its Nine Eyes partner. Washington absolutely strong arms Europe, but it's strategically aligned with the Netherlands.
Like, just think about the guy coming into the White House. What about him screams quiet, behind-the-scenes diplomatic win taker?
The significant geopolitical shake-up of the past few years should serve as a clear warning to Europeans to prioritize their own defense instead of depending on the USA.
Somehow it never leads to anything :-)
There is a reason the US does not recognize the ICC. And we also know they have the plans ready to free any soldier from the Netherlands _if_ we were to arrest a American soldier.
And the US _will_ execute that plan. And the Netherlands _will_ sit back and let it happen.
See, the world is a big schoolyard, and America is tired of shaking people down for protection money and threatens us "to start protecting ourselves".
I don't like Trump, but I can't deny he accelerates events that should have started a while back. Very good for our future, not so much for the US. But that's what they voted for.
This is false though. No one pays US money for defense. The 2% spending is on their own industry. The analogy breaks down.
If anything, the US pays to support other countries/allies.
There's a reason the law you're talking about only authorizes the president to do it. The lawmakers know that what they by passing the law are threatening is crazy, so they put it in the hands of the president, who they understand will never use it. They make sure there's a strong gate separating them and the other dog, then they bark. They know that actually trying to extract people from the Hague would look something like the Battle of Hostomel on steroids and would permanently and irrevocably damage relations and they would do nothing of the sort.
Hearing the inaugural speech of President Trump, I feel that some treaties and contracts might soon be worth less than the paper they were written on, if breaking those somehow gives national benefits in the quest to "make America great again".
That is how Mr. Trump's speech came across to me anyway. Perhaps and hopefully that is untrue, I'm not a native speaker, so perhaps I lost some subtle nuances.
Wow, the conspiracy theories in this thread are nuts.
The Netherlands is a port economy and agricultural exporter. The U.S. Navy protects the sea lanes it relies on. The Netherlands have been a reliable and natural American ally because our interests align--particularly when it comes to a war as potentially devastating to international trade as a Pacific conflict.
(Zooming in to ASML, their largest customer is TSMC.)
Is that a benefit? I got the impression some countries are rather pressured by the US to spend their money on US military equipment (instead of alternatives) rather than the reverse.
Most importantly, the F-35A is the only available platform certified for nuclear weapons delivery so as long as the Netherlands wants to continue participating in the NATO nuclear sharing arrangement there is no alternative. Germany looked into getting the Typhoon certified for the nuclear strike mission but gave up due to high costs and purchased the F-35A instead.
Which circles back to the current problem in the White House. Allies don't work on transactionalism and threats. They work using a lot of silent diplomacy and the understanding that you sometimes sacrifice a bit for an ally.
Everybody gets some wins.
https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_...
"ASML can remotely disable chip machines if China invades Taiwan" - https://nltimes.nl/2024/05/21/asml-can-remotely-disable-chip...
It is as credible as it gets. The explicit threat is in the American Service-Members' Protection Act and it was signed into law by President George W. Bush on August 2, 2002.
Which part of this do you feel is propaganda?
It's as uncredible as it gets the moment you spend more than 1 minute thinking about it. Let's play this logically through.
In order to coerce the Netherlands to align with ASML Export Controls (With the assumption they do not already align with such policy), the US (Who exactly in the US, the famously No-New-Wars Donald Trump, or an isolationist Congress) is going to the invoke the Hague Invasion Act, to "free" nonexistent American officials that are held up by nonexistent criminal convictions by the Hague? And this will somehow coerce the Netherlands despite being completely unrelated to ASML which is located 137 KM away in Veldhoven?
Even the gritty details, how exactly is this "invasion" of yours going to work? You are going to send a battallion of Marines to attack the Hague, or are you going to Veldhoven 137 KM away to occupy ASML Factories or capture the ASML CEO? Which of the two? All the while provoking a kinetic war with a technologically-peer nation? Even if you do manage to do it, what then? Your supply lines are completely cut, enemy troops are moving in with greater firepower and numbers. Or are you assuming some kind of national invasion where the US Military is going to direct a CSG to attack the Dutch then some sort of occupation, likely within wider war against Europe which likely lead to quagmire of massive American casualties, all for the sake of "coercing" ASML not to export to China? And American people, US Congress, political rivals and the Democrats will just stand by instead of likely removing the incumbent?
The nonalignment is dubious. The motivation within individuals is non-credible. The mechanism does not exist. The invasion is highly improbable and self-defeating. The very fact that you label this as "as credible as it gets" should tell anyone that you and OP are either extremely uninformed, or being intellectually dishonest with an agenda to divide.
Okay. Let's.
> In order to coerce the Netherlands to align with ASML Export Controls
Oops. You went down the wrong route. The credible threat I'm talking about is over the International Criminal Court potentially prosecuting American service members.
That is as credible as it gets. Elected politicians got together, and signed their promise of it happening into literal law. There is no more credible way for America to signal that they are going to do something besides actually doing it.
Please re-read my comment more carefully. I'm not talking about the ASML or export controls.
> The very fact that you label this as "as credible as it gets" should tell anyone that you and OP are either extremely uninformed, or being intellectually dishonest with an agenda to divide.
You sling a lot of accusations. Try to not guess what I might think. Read my actual words. Thanks.
America did in fact threaten the Netherland with invasion. Credibly. This is a fact. I precisely named my source in my previous comment.
No. They did not do this in context of ASML, nor did I say that they did that.
The ICC doesn't execute its arrest warrants. Even if it were stupid enough to issue one for an American's arrest, there would be plenty of time for de-escalation between its issuance and execution.
In fact the credibility of the threat is what makes the de-escalation so much more likely.
So you're intellectually dishonest then. You reply to my comment criticising the framing of an US invasion in the context of ASML export controls, disputing such framing as propaganda and then now you say it's not at all about ASML exports in a thread about ASML exports and instead some pendantic nitpick about the Hague Act?
> The credible threat I'm talking about is over the International Criminal Court potentially prosecuting American service
Declaring war on America and then firing missiles at their cities is also a way for an credible invasion of any country by America to occur. Does that mean then that the invasion of X country by America is a "credible threat" then?
Either you using your own made up definition that is so generalized that it is a pointless statement, or No. Because such a scenario relies upon a series of prior actions (and even the mechanics of the invasion itself) that would be considered highly improbable, which is what makes it non-credible. You'd have to explain how such a realistic chain of events could occur given contemporary context.
Ok. Have a nice day then. :)
Hell i would bet ASML will move to US than stay in EU, if the US says move to the US and we will allow you to do business with China again.
Also it looks like China has multiple EUV tracks on going from SSMB to that tin based EUV that ASML works with.
Queue in the "First time" meme with China and Netherlands.
But presumably there is a partnership, so that the Netherlands accomodates the US and the US accommodates the Netherlands, so that nobody is unhappy, with this working well enough that no one has felt the need to do switch.
https://www.asianometry.com/p/euv-lithography-but-with-a-fre...
Dude, they found a way, until they did.
We get pressured until we do what America wants us to do.
Which will render the country a technological back-water and affect their ability to build the advanced systems needed to compete in a war for Taiwan.
And given that China would be fighting against a war against West + Japan + South Korea with support from at least a few ASEAN countries they would need to be at the top of their game to have a chance of taking Taiwan.
It's a ban on anything less than 7nm. So every year the discrepancy accumulates.
And having compute superiority can make a big difference if it ends up being a war largely conducted by competing AIs.
>clearly China is capable of catching up with ASML’s tooling
The only thing clear to me is precisely the opposite. Nobody has been able to catch up with ASML, including China. If China is capable of catching up on their own (without espionage), why would Taiwan even matter? Why would export controls on ASML tooling even matter?
They matter because ASML and TSMC are companies built on secret know-how that others can’t replicate. Do we really need to explain on HN that companies are built on secrets?
The CCP has fully subscribed to irredentism and it has popular support in the mainland. Taiwan will never not matter.
But otherwise I agree with the rest of your argument.
Plenty of countries, particularly those in an economic slump, have popular support for stupid wars. That changes quickly when the war is started and the costs come home.
This is the example Xi, and those around him, would be looking to.
Correct. It's for domestic consumption. By the time leadership is weak enough to be compelled into playing it out, chances are it won't make military sense.
BTW the ASML technology is based in part on research that was funded by the USA; which is why the USA has a say in who gets it.
Even if China could capture the ASML tooling intact it would only be useful for some reverse engineering. Actual production requires both skilled local employees and ongoing support from headquarters back in the Netherlands.
First, Taiwan sees HK and knows what's up. You don't sleep next to an elephant all your life and not know when they will roll over.
Second, even if Taiwan didn't rig for sabotage AND (big AND) just straight up surrendered (it won't); People will slowly leave, turn over will happen, machines will age out, the right investments will not be made, etc. Taiwan may not shatter (immediately), but it will rust and dull. Look at HK and I believe that is the BEST case scenario for the China.
For Taiwan, semi-conductors represent a poison pill/porcupine defense. But that is all that is, defense/poison. It won't stop China if the leaders decide that it would just eat the consequences. I hope Taiwan can find a creative solution to their woes.
For China, they have to realize they are on a timer. They can't keep "turning off money machines", or "crushing jewels". At some point they are going to run out of "resources" to extract and I hope they figure out how to work with countries in their region instead of antagonizing them. Why? because 1+ billion people will suffer if they don't figure it out.
And if China doesn't like it, it can reinvent the wheel. Here is the fun part. I think China can absolutely do so in a technical sense. But I know the people absolutely won't do it, because they don't want it/aren't incentivized to do it.