The race is on to build the most complex machine
economist.com
economist.com
Nonpaywalled link: https://archive.is/flU0v
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_nitride
The light wavelength is proportional to the band gap. GaN has a 3.4 electron volt band gap.
To get a 13.5 nanometer emission, you'd need a direct band gap material in excess of 90 electron volts:
https://www.kmlabs.com/en/wavelength-to-photon-energy-calcul...
No such materials exist.
The emission from tin in EUV light sources is actually from thermal (blackbody) radiation. The infrared lasers heat tin vapor to extremely high temperatures where it shines into the extreme ultraviolet. It's inherently wasteful but this extreme ultraviolet range is much harder to access than visible light or near ultraviolet.
The one major advantage NIL has over optical techniques is that it does not require multiple patterning to address edge cases:
Isn't that the craziest thing? America can prevent the Netherlands selling goods to China. Isolationist America? What did they threaten the Netherlands with, I wonder?
Just the fact that some tech comes for Lawrence Livermore Labs shows that relations are "tight".
It's important to remember that this influence is a product of goodwill. (Wouldn't have thought I'd have to mention this a year ago...)
The Dutch are beginning to decouple from America [1] because despite those economic and military ties, if it isn't supported politically and culturally, it's difficult to project.
Countries don't behave out of goodwill, they do out of interests.
Same as now. This "decoupling" angle is a product of interests in the EU "deep state", which sees an apportubity to do a power grab. Note how suddenly the EU tries to insert itself in military matters... and people buy it hook, line, and sinker, too.
Would be interesting to see how that would work out for ASML specifically since US obviously wants their products. But I think it would be catastrophic for both sides if the US sanctioned ASML. Less catastrophic for ASML to comply.
The US has successfully fined many EU companies for OFAC violations, for example. This is especially ridiculous because the EU actually required European companies NOT to comply with US sanctions on Iran.
(Note that I don't think this specific restriction on selling fab equipment to comes comes from OFAC)
It only works until it does not, and it works less well if one does not abuse it. Maybe this administration will just make it more profitable and safer to ally with China at this rate. A number of countries will be making this decision in the next four years, and Americans very well may be disappointed.
until china decide to conquer you politically,economically etc, well its same with US honestly but US atleast have functional democracy
If Trump really wanted to end the war he'd send more weapons and support Ukraine. Instead
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-halts-...
I also hate China's dictatorship but its hard to say we are so much better when President wants to emulate them. Trump doesn't think the US is better then China just richer. And not in a soul searching way, Trump doesn't believe in being better. He's an amoral authoritarian who's literally praise Tianamen square massacre as a strong response. So we might still be better but not for long if we dont fight back. And its not surprising if our allies dont trust us when we are backstabbing Ukraine and threatening to annex Canada.
If the only acceptable answer is 1991 borders, that's going to be an incredibly expensive proposition. The "economic isolation/sanctions will work any day now" strategy doesn't seem to be delivering, and any amount of defensive armament we could supply will be just chewed up for several years to come. Maybe if you give it another five years, Putin will finally lose interest or exhaust his resources, but in the interim tens of thousands more will die.
This war is expensive for Russia too, but for them it's a matter of national face-- this was a pretty blatant response to their sphere of influence being swallowed by NATO/EU expansion. So trying to get them to fold, especially when they have the stronger military position right now, is a hard sell. I'm not sure even resumption of trade/readmission to institutions is that big of a prize to offer, considering that their brand is pretty much sunk-- who's queuing up to buy Russian goods now?
We could lean into the idea this is about national face-- figure out the smallest concession Ukraine has to offer so Putin can declare a "victory" and de-escalate. But we're so adamant about 'we cannot reward the bully', or convinced that he'll keep trying for expansionism that we don't treat this option seriously.
There's a lot of belief that if Putin is allowed to keep a square millimetre of Ukraine, he will treat it as a license to keep pushing the border west. I'm not sure. We've proven that territorial conquest will be expensive and time-consuming, and I'm sure this has forced them to re-price all their assumptions. He has to finish what he started in Ukraine, but there's far less shame if he simply drops a hypothetical mission in Moldova or Georgia from unformalized future plans..
They are a resource extraction economy and there will always be a buyer for those.
> The "economic isolation/sanctions will work any day now" strategy doesn't seem to be delivering
> We've proven that territorial conquest will be expensive and time-consuming
Well, which one is it? If the former, why would they deescalate at all?
The point is that they don't need (just) any part of Ukraine, or to save face or any of that. That's not why they started the war. Their goal is to take down the world order in which the coalition of western democracies decides what goes - after all you can't buy whole nations, but you can always influence corrupt authoritarian leaders. Until that goal is achieved, Russia will keep waging wars, while also destabilizing said democracies by financing ultra-right/populist politicians and pushing Goebbels-like propaganda and conspiracies to their people.
The west simply doesn't have a choice if it wants to remain free and in control; it needs to keep up the pressure until the Russian regime runs out of money for the war and/or gets changed from within.
ukrainian have entire western + nato support for 2-3 years already, what makes you think this year any different???
As opposed to cutting off aid giving Russia false hope of outlasting and conquering Ukraine and other parts of Europe which encourages Putin to continue the war
we all know that russia is not winning but they are not losing either, any Ukrainian/Russian offensive is not happen soon and only battle of attrition at this point (which russian have an edge because more people available in russia)
History will catch up with the US one day.
Taking territory, taking sea, influencing international institutions and so on. They've been using unrestricted warfare to wage probably the largest scale influence campaign of any country in history to get China's way in the world.
This, from a country that has very flexible views on the value of human life and sees the US's valuing of human life as a weakness to exploit. The CCP even used terrorist human shield tactics.
We've fought China's enemies more than we've fought China. Germany, Japan, England and Russia all took territory from China. We've fought or pushed back against all of them. I'm sure the Great Wall exists for reasons you can imagine too. All of its neighbors are basically some kind of empire and China isn't exempt from playing the same game.
People misunderstand our posture to our allies. We aren't losing them. We're making them stronger. The US and its allies all need to harden up, because that's the posture of China and Russia.
To topple the US, you would have to topple a bunch of states simultaneously, because the federal government is irrelevant in that regard. That only gives you a chance, not even a guarantee of overturning the constitution. Even then, in the worst case our allies would see the value of our continued existence and possibly intervene. Don't expect to see it any time soon.
China’s behavior in Africa and countries such as Laos and Cambodia resembles neocolonialism of the past - [1]. In other words, they acted exactly like colonists who controlled China a century ago.
Even when they were a communism country, they caused conflicts with all of their neighbors — USSR, India, Vietnam. They supported Khmer Rouge and were responsible for the genocide that killed at least a million Khmers. They invaded and occupied Tibets.
[0] - https://www.twz.com/news-features/chinas-sudden-live-fire-na...
America has better values than most countries. And Americans should generally trust America more than foreign countries and certainly more than the chinese government.
here are some civilian deaths within china:
- land reform killed 1-4.7 million
- campaign to suppress counterrevolutionaries killed 712k-2mm
- three-anti and five-anti campaigns killed at least 100k
- sufan movement killed ~53k
- anti-rightist campaign killed 550k-2mm
- '59 tibetan uprising killed 87k
- violence in the great chinese famine killed 2.5mm
- socialist education movement killed 77k
- guanxi massacre killed 100-150k
- inner mongolia incident killed 15-100k
- yangjiang massacre killed 3.5k
- daoxian massacre killed 9k
- ruijin massacre killed 1k
- zhao jianmin spy case killed 17k
- shadian incident killed 1.6k
- tiananmen square protests & massacre killed 200-10k
that's just a sample. this doesn't show the ongoing genocides, the economic colonization of SE asia and africa, the abuses of chinese-supported states (DPRK, burmese junta, naval intervention in libya, etc.)
objectively the American system seems to work out much better and is based on vastly superior principles.
all that aside, I am an American and place the interests of my people ahead of those of foreigners. as such, I will support a world order led by the government most likely to maximize our welfare and very nearly any means needed to preserve that.
Its fine you are a patriot and think about your country first and foremost, but so is rest of the world, meaning remaining 96% of humans living right now. Pretty horrible things were done not so long ago with similar mentality to yours. But if you want US to be a global selfish bully so be it, world will realign.
It is throwing absurd tariffs at anyone with a pulse except for Russia.
It stabbed an ally, Ukraine, in the back. For a treaty with their invaders. Dividing Ukraine's national resources between the US and Russia, negotiated without Ukrainian representation, in Saudi Arabia.
The space between the perception of America and China internationally has much less space between them a lot of Americans would prefer to acknowledge. I don't have much recent data, but I would suspect international sentiment on the whole right now is more favorable of China than the US in absolute terms.
Explicitly? Probably nothing.
Implicitly? Nukes.
That's where the buck stops in geopolitics.
Ultimately, all international interaction is backed by implicit threat of war - and, for past couple decades, nukes are the trump card. The world is divided between the "haves", and the "have nots", and the "have nots" can't do anything if the "haves" put the nuclear option onto the table.
Of course, in polite company, nothing ever gets to that stage; the jobs of the leaders, diplomats, advisers, etc. is to keep everything low-key enough to not escalate beyond horse trading and strongly-worded letters. But everyone is acutely aware that the threat of violence is implicitly always there, and who can credibly threaten whom.
Eh, probably not. The Dutch have a serious nuclear power economy [1]. But procuring and refining the uranium would take at least a year. Their larger strategic deficit in long-range missile production (or a civil launch industry).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_Netherlan...
https://www.urenco.com/global-operations/urenco-nederland
Because of the counter-intuitive way uranium enrichment works, enrichment from natural uranium to commercial reactor fuel takes more separative work than going from commercial reactor fuel to bomb material:
https://scipython.com/blog/uranium-enrichment-and-the-separa...
Because commercial power reactors consume so much uranium per year, the on-site inventory needed just to produce a year's worth of commercial reactor fuel is enough to make many bomb cores. Nuclear breakout could be very fast if the Netherlands were willing to endure all the diplomatic consequences of withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
I agree about the longer timeline to develop a ballistic missile system that could deliver a warhead.
EDIT: switched erroneous "less" to "more"
More*.
(Also, fascinating. Thank you.)
Also, like 'JumpCrisscross notices, weapons themselves are but half of the equation - the other one is delivery. A few nukes and a trigger-happy dictator can get everyone to back away and indulge you some (see: North Korea), but to play at the big table, you need to have the capacity to deal a serious blow to another country (see: lesser nuclear powers) - but no one will let you get to that point. Nuclear-capable countries are not particularly keen on there being more of them.
Sanctions, maybe. Invaded, almost certainly not. If there is a consistent theme to American, Chinese and Russian foreign policy over the last 30 years, it's that there is a nuclear sovereignty respected above all.
Despite what 'Qiu_Zhanxuan wrote, you can't actually go from 0 to nuclear sovereignty in 6 months, and you definitely can't hide that you're doing it for long.
No, but you can go from 0 to "possibly nuclear everyone yell about it," and stay there until you're actually nuclear.
Nobody will do anything about possibly nuclear. And nobody will do anything once you're nuclear. This was the critical hole in non-proliferation, and for a while it worked, because everyone pretended nuclear sovereignty wasn't a thing, but now that it is there is--and should be--a race to who are the regional powers, and who are subsurvient to them. The Netherlands have a history of being conquered and being rich. It makes sense for them to be a nuclear sovereign.
Fair, but I imagine everyone learned from that, too.
> The Netherlands have a history of being conquered and being rich. It makes sense for them to be a nuclear sovereign.
Arguably, it makes sense for every country to be one, if they could pull it off, but so far it seems they're sufficiently deterred from trying.
As for the nukes, I invite you to imagine a hypothetical: what if Netherlands really, really wanted to sell a lithography machine to China, for whatever reason (say an ancient prophecy compelling them to), and the US really, really wanted for that not to happen (again, prophecy of something). Try to imagine how those negotiations would go - step through them, like you would a loop in the debugger, and tell me where you believe it stops.
(to play one option forward, if the US actually is insane enough to threaten the netherlands with this, what do you think the dutch will play forward in their own game theory. One of the key aspects of nuke geopolitics is that nuclear powers cannot be allowed to get away with throwing that weight around, because there's no obvious termination point: the netherlands would instantly be very strongly incentivised to, if not develop their own nukes, align with China (or Russia, or probably more realistically, poke France) in return for a credible threat of retaliation. Congrats to the US, they've just scored an own goal)
What exists is what I described above. Everyone knows war, up to and including nuclear, is always possible, but no one wants to go there. There is an obvious termination point: total nuclear war. It anchors everyone's expectations about how far they can push, who they can or cannot threaten with military action. People can run these hypotheticals quickly in their heads. Netherlands asking US, "so what you're gonna do, invade?", US saying "yes, and what then", and Netherlands... conceding, because they can't one-up. Compare: the only reason the war in Ukraine is still hot, is because Russia has nukes, and Ukraine doesn't, so there's only so much any of the allies can do to help[1]. If both countries had their own arsenal, or neither, this wouldn't happen.
So not "nuclear taboo", just an implicit understanding of MAD and where the buck stops, and how it affects who can threaten whom with military action, and recursively, how far anyone can push anyone else in political negotiations. It trickles down to the ASML/China question, too - even if they really wanted to have this deal, politicians in Netherlands know they have to concede to the US, because what else can they do?. They already run the "what if we X" / "then we Y" loop in their heads, hit the ceiling, and know they can trade horizontally, but can't escalate vertically beyond some point because of X, that's because of Y, that's because of Z, that's because of... nukes.
--
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_taboo#Debate_over_the_...
[1] - And let's not forget that Putin threatened the world with nuclear retaliation if NATO helps Ukraine too much. There goes your taboo. Not that it existed, unless you forgot that some years ago, USA threatened the world with nuclear first-strike as a possible retaliation for cyber attacks.
EUV lithography was jointly developed by the U.S. and the Netherlands [1][2][3].
[1] https://www.eetimes.com/u-s-gives-ok-to-asml-on-euv-effort/
[2] https://www.llnl.gov/article/27641/euvl-partnership-makes-it...
[3] https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2022/making-euv-lab-to-...
"Processors built using EUV technology are expected to reach speeds of up to 10 GHz in 2005-2006."