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Comment by world2vec | Hacker News Reader

Might be a silly question but considering the tensions between US and EU right now... What would happen to all these deals if ASML was was not allowed to sell their machines to US companies? I don't know enough to even speculate on these wild scenarios

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There are parts manufactured around the world (including the US), and the lithography machines are NOT the only step with only one vendor.

US/EU economies are too intertwined to be decoupled. Just distancing the US economy from China is hard.

Sure, but the US wants to put a minimum 25% tax on imports from Europe, that'll affect these machines as well.

Doubly so if parts imported from the US are also subject to EU tariffs.

But I'm not sure how much this will affect the costs of fabs?

>What would happen to all these deals if ASML was was not allowed to sell their machines to US companies?

That is not going to happen since ASML depends itself on some US supplied tech.

What should worry EU is US building capability of their own and sabotage ASML.

I think people give too much importance to being 1-2 generation ahead. Even if TSMC dies(slowly), it won't affect the world too much if Samsung continues to stay one generation behind with Intel likely joining them.

TSMC has a massive 65% of the market. There is no way Samsung or any other player can plug that whole in terms of sheer capacity before a quite long investment cycle.

I think funding won't be a problem. Every country and investor would want to fund next TSMC. In last 10 years TSMC production capacity increased by 5x. There's no reason why 10 years is not enough for Samsung[1].

[1]: https://www.nextplatform.com/2022/10/13/tsmc-the-leading-ind...

I think that won't happen as ASML relies on a bunch of patents. Now I don't think American patents are valid abroad anyways. So probably shouldn't be a concern.

Patents alone aren't protecting ASML or other countries would have knocked it off by now. Trade secrets drive real innovation. You only patent what you think you can profitably protect.

This is me halfremembering recent comment on HN. It's structured so that the ip is owned by an American company that licenses to ASML or something like that.

Dude if Europe is stopping ASML from selling to the US Europe isn't going to be enforcing patent laws for the US.

ASML make laser sources in San Diego, without them there would be no EUV machines. So it isn't just patents. ASML as we know today wouldn't exist without US R&D and manufacturing.

https://www.asml.com/en/company/about-asml/cymer

Was it one of these?

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=asml%20llnl&type=comment

If that realistically happened, America would likely seize ASML assets in the United States and continue manufacture.

I'm not entirely sure of the supply chain, but I'm fairly certain that ASML has significant operations and manufacturing in the United States. I'm in Portland and ASML has a large office here for obvious reasons.

Then ASML gets Nord Stream'd.

US has many military bases across EU, after such hostile act they might as well take control over the Netherlands

Sure, but they'd turn the world against them. Or at least all of Europe. It'd be trivial to disable ASML's production process, too - as others have commented, they rely on tons of suppliers as well as a lot of local employees and knowledge.

I do love armchair hypotheticals like that, but a few seconds of thinking will show that a hostile takeover of the country will not mean the US retains access to ASML's machines.

How big do you think those bases are, exactly? They are reliant in the host country.

It's a bit naive to expect US bases in Europe to still be there in the next 20 years. First, Trump clearly wants to pull out of Europe, because the current Republican party has basically no interest in Europe whatsoever (and it may even be seen as an enemy by them - it's the embodiment of all the "social state" fears they harbour). Second, if the US stop cooperating with the EU on security and forces Europe to rearm, they would probably become redundant and an easy target for populist movements - especially when Trump is out and will be replaced by a less appealing figure. Meloni, ... won't be able to sell Trump as a role model to their voters for long if he really plans on fucking up the European economy; if there's little to be gained it's easier for populists and nationalist in general to just paint him as an enemy.

As a European there's been a lingering feeling of anti-Americanism in Europe that's been somewhat dormant for the last 30 years. It's clearly awakening now, and it risks going mainstream too, which would basically make the position of US bases untenable unless there's a direct reward for them (like, having security guarantees)

LOL. Do you think a few thousand soldiers can beat a country's military?

And what makes you think EU countries won't kick out US soldiers until then?

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