ASML's boss has a warning for Europe
economist.com
economist.com
The ASML article is hinting that Europe should fab more of its own ICs. Most of ASML's equipment is exported, not used within Europe. It's not that ASML wants to leave Europe. It's that they need more European customers.
Other articles in those two issues cover how Europe is starting to respond to American isolationism and Russian aggression. US threats to pull out of NATO are taken seriously, and contingency plans for a post-US NATO are underway. It looks like France will provide the nuclear deterrent. France's nuclear weapons program is not dependent on the US, but the UK's is. Further acquisition of US fighter aircraft is now much less likely. There's a concern that the F-35 is too "cloud enabled" and dependent on US data sources. The Swedish Gripen is looking like a better option. Efforts to replace US satellite dependency are underway, with recent launches on Ariane boosters from French Guiana. Reduction of EU dependence on the US internet is progressing. All the countries with borders facing Russia or Ukraine have upped military spending considerably. There's debate from the countries further from the front line on how much they have to.
Decades-old alliances and trade patterns are shifting. Europe has less of a problem with China than the US does. Russia is much closer, has caused trouble for a century, and there's a lot of bad history there. The US has a long history with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, but Europe does not. Nor does Europe have any obligations to Israel, which helps when getting along with the Arab world.
Read more non-US sources on what's happening. Huge, slow changes are underway.
The USA is threatening to annex its (former) allies. This is not isolationism.
Additionally, we do have trade with the Asian countries mentioned. My factory produces heavy machinery, and we’ve installed it on sites in Taiwan. Europe has very good relationships with those countries.
What does the EU stand to gain from trying to kneecap China's technological development? The US' motivation is clear: the US wants to maintain its hegemonic position. But the EU has no such position to defend.
Instead of acting as a mere pawn of the US, the EU should formulate its own foreign policy that maintains relations with both the US and China, and which avoids getting sucked into one or the other side of the US-China rivalry. The ASML CEO's statement on this is right:
> Referring to the Dutch government’s willingness to follow America’s lead on export bans, Mr Fouquet says that Europe must “decide for itself what it wants” and “should not be dictated to by anyone else”.
China is just as much a threat to European companies and European interests as it is to American interests.
Trump and his foolishness aside, it's high time Europe wakes up and realizes China is already at war with us - in fact, it has been at war with us for well over a decade. China systematically undercuts our industries with slave labor and sharting on their environment (not that I'd care too much about smog in China, that's their business, but I do care when our industry can't compete because we actually want to protect our environment), China deploys organized hacker campaigns against us or outright buys up our companies to extract knowledge and know-how - and we've bent over for way too long. We haven't even ever insisted on reciprocity in market access ffs!
By this argument isn't America undercutting Europe by taxing companies less and being ok with less worker rights?
> China is already at war with us
Who is us here? Because you are threatening a takeover of Greenland and giving up Ukraine to Russia. Not to mention tariffing and threatening your closest allies.
> and sharting on their environment
Per capita co2 emissions
USA: 14.21
China: 8.89
We, at least until Trump, got the US military keeping Russia out of Europe and dealing with a whole lot of other bullshit we were too frugal to deal with on our own on the global stage.
> Who is us here? Because you are threatening a takeover of Greenland and giving up Ukraine to Russia. Not to mention tariffing and threatening your closest allies.
Europe, that should be obvious from context.
> Per capita co2 emissions
CO2 is one thing, but the time that the Western world had smog events like China had up until their Olympic Games is decades in the past. Besides, China's per-capita emissions are driven down by the fact that they still have a lot of utterly poor people that barely cause any emissions.
China has actually made very significant efforts to reduce smog, and there's been a huge improvement in the last 10 years. There's still way more smog than in the US or Western Europe, but it's gotten dramatically better, and it will probably continue to get better.
Well we have Trump now.
> Europe, that should be obvious from context.
There is no "we" if you threaten to invade land and treat us like enemies. I thought the sarcasm was obvious.
> CO2 is one thing, but the time that the Western world had smog events like China had up until their Olympic Games is decades in the past.
How many decades of pollution did the USA emit developing through the last century while Asia didn't because they were insanely poor because of war and colonisation?
> Besides, China's per-capita emissions are driven down by the fact that they still have a lot of utterly poor people that barely cause any emissions.
Germany has a per capita co2 emission rate of 8.01 so even lower than China. The USA is at 14.21.
Have you been at recent top conferences in computer science? Every year the number of top papers coming from China increases. A direct consequence of the sustained investment into education. China also leads most European in EV adoption.
You man know Kübler-Ross's Five Stages Of Grief [1]. Like most Europeans, you seem to be stuck somewhere between denial and anger regarding European relative decline vis-a-vis China. I suggest flying over there and taking a look for yourself.
No, but respond tit-for-tat. In this case, tariffs or import bans would be an appropriate response. In the case of hacking, either hackbacks or cutting China off from the Internet.
Same reason it's a thereat top the US. Because China's technological development is a threat to the profitability of EU companies, meaning it's a threat to the EU citizens standard of living. Because who would buy anything made in EU if products from China cost half as much at the same quality?
Why do you think they're putting so high tariffs on Chinese EVs despite the EU's push for zero carbon environmentalism. If they cared so much about the environment they would import cheap Chinese EVs to accelerate the switch to EVs, but they care more about preserving jobs and profits in the union which is what every country prioritizes, because otherwise profits would collapse, unemployment would skyrocket.
European countries also willingly and intentionally outsourced their technological edge to the US. This didn't end up in disaster either. Why should it be any different with China?
When Japanese or Korean cars came we had almost the same reactions. Nobody complains now. Why should it be different with China?
Most of the chips are produced in Taiwan. There is no way EU can catch up. What does, economically, change if this moves to China!
Treating technology and economy as a zero sum game is simply wrong.
In this scenario it is absolutely trivial for the US to impose their own will on the EU. We act selflessly not out of a sense of responsibility or altruism but out of an actual lack of sense of self. And the current administration is so sure of the persistence of this state of things that has no trouble whatsoever antagonising the EU with threats and demands- they know we'll never get our acts together in any case.
No, the days of the US being a mecca for global tech workers are over.
The truth is you still have a far greater chance of getting in trouble for saying the wrong thing in most of Europe than you do anywhere in the US.
Also, enticing Europeans to move to the US is exceedingly easy. You ask, “do you want to 4X your current salary with 20% less taxes?” The answer is usually yes.
Maybe one day the 600 million people in Europe will decide to start finally integrating their countries for real and collaborate with each other on building and innovating like the Americans and Chinese. Until then, disjointed euro micro states are sitting ducks for getting stripped of their best talent and companies.
I don't really understand why people make claims like that. To me it's obvious that the vast majority of people are not particularly motivated by money. They would like to have more money, but once they have reached the standard of living common in developed countries, they are not willing to make the kind of life choices that would give them more money.
Finnish nurses are a good example. They would have a better standard of living in Norway. As Finnish citizens, they have a subjective right to live and work there, even stronger than in the EU. The language would be easy to learn. The culture and the society are very similar. And it's close to Finland, making it easy to visit your friends and family any time. But few nurses actually move there, because most people need better reasons than money for moving to another country.
1. Finnish nurses need to learn to speak Norwegian to work there (nursing is not tech, you can't get by speaking english with your 75 year old patients).
2. Finnish and Norwegian are not at all related linguistically. Also, english fluency in the Nordics (and Europe in general) is grossly overstated by Americans whos only experience of Europe was spending a few months in a capital city with international students doing an exchange at Uni. English fluency declines dramatically among the general population each kilometer you move outside the capital and away from workers at international companies (same can be said for fluency decline by old age).
3. Nurses make only marginally more in Norway than they do in Finland, and when adjusting for cost of living (which is higher in Norway), depending on where you live you could make less. Best case you're looking at an extra 15,000 euro per year (with high taxes on that extra amount). Not an extra 300,000 per year with dramatically lower taxes like a talented engineer moving to the US would get. One is an actual opportunity to build financial independence. The other is a few bucks to piss away on a slightly nicer holiday.
4. Nurses in Finland are predominantly female (92%), and females are less likely than males to move countries for a job (not by a ton, but relevant for this analysis).
Even considering (4), I can assure you with 100% certainty, that if there were no language barrier and a nurse in Norway could make 350,000 euros per year you would see Finnish nurses making the move en masse. Finnish women are not stupid.
Nurse salaries have been a major talking point for decades. While only a small fraction of nurses move to Norway, it's still enough people that it gets mentioned in the news once in a while. Especially around elections.
The official languages of Finland are Finnish and Swedish. If you speak one as a native language, you must learn the other. If you work as a nurse in Finland, it's quite likely that you have to use Swedish at work. At least occasionally. If you are comfortable doing that, learning Norwegian is not such a big deal.
I studied computer science and eventually ended up in the US. And I'm still here after a surprisingly long time. Based on what I have personally seen, Finns who move to the US for work are less likely to stay than those who move to Sweden, UK, or Switzerland. The culture is just too different. And if you have kids, the salaries are not actually that high. The consensus seems to be that for those with kids, 300k in the US is worth about as much as 100k in Finland. At least in the areas where immigrants with nominally high salaries are likely to live.
300K as a family in even midwestern US cities (far cheaper than the coasts) is not crazy for a college educated couple. My US friends and entire extended family earns roughly 100-150Kish per year living in the US midwest (so roughly 300k household income per couple, yet at much lower tax rates).
On this salary they afford childcare, houses 2-3X the size of the average Finnish house in Metro-Helsinki (not kidding), expensive vacations, two new cars, fantastic health insurance via employer, and maxing out retirement accounts -- which has MASSIVE benefits over the Finnish pension system where the government takes control of your money and invests it in crap 0% yielding bonds. I personally know many US couples who are liquid millionaires already by their mid 40s just from working normal jobs w/ 401ks, and much of this is tax free wealth that importantly, they have full control over.
In Espoo/Helsinki/Vantaa, 100k household income gets your family a tiny 3-bed row house, one used Passat, a trip to the canary islands, and yes government childcare/healthcare. The main difference though, the Finnish family making 100k never accrues any actual wealth or sizable investment assets like stocks (And even if they did, government eats 20% more than in the US with higher cap gains tax). They will never reach financial independence. They will be begging the future austerity government for permission to retire at 70 (age keeps going up, so not unlikely). Hopefully the economy doesn't keep stagnating and the population doesn't keep declining, because it's not even really their money, it can easily be squandered by the collective.
You have more options once you get a green card. But with the initial uncertainty and delays in getting H-1B, the employer choosing not to sponsor a green card immediately, and the years of bureaucracy for getting the green card, that can easily be a decade after the initial offer. Which is plenty for people who don't particularly like the American culture to decide to go to somewhere with lower salaries, lower costs, and more freedom to make your own choices.
You are comparing the most expensive area in Finland to areas you consider cheap in the US. But from a Finnish immigrant's perspective, the reasonable comparison would be the opposite. You are forced to live in an expensive area in the US, but if you return to Finland, you can choose a cheaper city. €100k/year would be close to the median for a family with kids in Helsinki but a pretty good income in other cities.
Are you sure we are living in the same world?
Also the example you provide is not pertinent. There is a reason why Software devs move the most. There are barriers for other professions. It is not easy to move as a doctor, lawyer, civil servant, etc...
The best predictor for moving permanently to another country for work seems to be a PhD. Jobs are scarce in the academia. And even if you are in the industry, you are probably the kind of person looking for the most interesting jobs.
My German boss just moved to the US. He really loves it there. He said he's also getting better healthcare for his child which has some rare form of autism or something, at which only the US has invested into research and cures at this point.
Edit: why the salty replies?
The original point was that given the US government's openly hostile attitude towards immigrants who simply exercised free speech, would the average highly qualified immigrant be more or less predisposed to want to immigrate.
This is made worse by the fact that there appears to be no goal to all this beyond intimidation and chilling effect. Even if you deported every single Palestine protester it would make a zero impact on the stated policy goals of mass deportation of illegal immigrants. None of the recent high profile protester cases were in the country illegally. They simply stated their opinion, and in one case, in an op ed for the student newspaper.
Note that the US has touted freedom of speech frequently and loudly when chastising autocratic foreign powers. So, when a smart software engineer in Europe sees that the current US president is willing to crush the most fundamental of civil liberties to make examples of a handful of legal immigrants, which will in no way do anything to meet his stated policy objectives, what do you think that engineer is likely to conclude?
Source for such claims please? German and UK governments are even more authoritarian on free speech. You can get arrested for a tweet insulting a politician: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bMzFDpfDwc
>the US has touted freedom of speech frequently and loudly when chastising autocratic foreign powers
So did Germany and Austria and most of western EU. They were buddy-buddy to Putin in the past for their gas, and now they're buddy-buddy with Azerbaijan who's slaughtering Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh because EU needs their gas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagorno-Karabakh_conflict
>to make examples of a handful of legal immigrants
Source for such claims please? How many skilled legal immigrants have been deported or subject to illegal government oppression?
There have been many such cases in the news recently: Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Yunseo Chung, Momodou Taal...
According to US Sectary of State Marco Rubio, the Trump administration is currently seeking to deport over 300 students, purely for criticizing Israel. None of them has been accused of any crime. The Trump administration calls anyone who protests against Israel a Hamas supporter and terrorist, cancels their visa, and tries to deport them.
Coming to a country to incite domestic terrorism or vocally support terrorist groups, gets you in trouble with the law in any country.
If you move to Germany/France/etc and occupy a university campus in support of Palestine, the police will drag you away and you will get deported.
If they had been in any way involved with domestic terrorism, then they could be charged, sentenced, and probably deported as a consequence. But what they actually did was peacefully protest, write Op-Eds, and generally speak their minds. That's 100% covered by the 1st Amendment.
The Trump administration hasn't charged these students with anything. It's asserting the right to deport legal immigrants purely based on their political opinions, which is an obvious breach of the 1st Amendment.
They were political agitators. A visa is a privilege not a right, and may be revoked for any reason, you don't have to commit a crime.
>though the latter would actually be protected by the 1st Amendment
The 1st amendment applies to US citizens, not guests on visas.
Why do you move to a country on a visa and then protest against it? Name me a country who accepts that from its visitors.
A visa to move to a country is a privilege, not a right. If you're protesting the government who gave you that visa and you're not a citizen, then get out, good-bye, nobody wants extra trouble makers, you can legally protest by leaving the country you dislike.
How is this even a conversation? Imagine you invite a guest in your house starting to annoy you the hell out. You'd want them out even though they haven't committed any crimes worth calling the police.
Political agitation is Constitutionally protected in the United States. In fact, it's one of the most important activities that people like Jefferson and Madison wanted to protect.
> A visa is a privilege not a right, and may be revoked for any reason
No, it cannot be revoked for any reason. Revoking visas because of Constitutionally protected speech is a clear violation of the 1st Amendment. The government is not allowed to retaliate against people (not just citizens - anyone) for speech.
> Name me a country who accepts that from its visitors .
Every liberal democracy.
> nobody wants extra trouble makers
Nobody wants fascists, but we're not kicking you out.
> Imagine you invite a guest in your house
This isn't your house. It's the United States of America. There are laws and Constitutional rights. If you don't like it, how about you go somewhere more suited to your tastes - somewhere without freedom of speech and due process.
And of course highly skilled people who work hard, want to be in a place that compensates them highly for their efforts, otherwise what's the point of busting your ass for decades if you're gonna be getting the same mediocre quality services as people on minimum wage?
This "better healthcare" will be true in the USA, for about 1 or 2% of top earners.
I doubt anywhere in the USA is that bad. To me it looks like health insurance is baked into the cost of living. Obviously bad for poor people and should be addressed but I imagine anyone on the median wage should be fine?
Historically yes, the US has been the global leader for more “bespoke” medical needs.
of course he would be happy with this move even if "normal" people would burn around him because he and his family is shielded and have gold parachute that allows him to go back to eu within hours
I know it might seem weird when you are in a hive mind but a lot of people do agree with whatever trump does. Even in places where you'd expect them not to. I'm in Morocco for example right now and most people either I've talked to are either ambivalent or slightly like Trump (or dislike him due to his position on Gaza, but Biden was even worse in terms of total inaction).
But I won't blame people for thinking that whatever is popular on Reddit or Blue sky actually is a majority opinion, just because of how insanely one sided and dramatic those places and people who spend a lot of time there tend to be. It's really brain rot inducing.
Both parties are trying to demonize each other. Biden did not fuck up the country with communism, obviously. But Trump is not hitler ...
Meanwhile I've seen democrats spit on other democrats because they were pro-Israel. It's not just on the right. And then you read about republicans responding to someone's wife getting deported by stating she deserved it. Fucking hell, where are we going?
People need to come together again. And yes, Trump is not making that easy, but it is the way forward.
Here I am. I am pro-Israel, I can even defend Netanyahu (well, his actions in a war defending Israel, where I have issues is him turning authoritarian). I am pro-Ukraine, pro-EU-US cooperation. I am anti-deportation (isn't everyone?) and pro-science. I am anti-mass-layoffs in government. I DO see the democrats as the party of the rich (WHY are they doing this btw? Are these people morons? If Trump manages to get the poor on his side, even with lies, and the democrats keep doing their poor=dumb thing, even when it's true, the democrats will lose every time). I was an Obama democrat (and since didn't vote).
Where should I go, if I don't want to be attacked.
It’s the same with all of the so-called travel warnings issued by some Western countries. The “warnings” were literally just to have your paperwork in order I.e., obey the law and don’t overstay your visa. It’s far more strict than previous admins but certainly nothing that would deter me from moving there (just yet) at least.
I don’t think Americans have any idea how good they have it under any administration, especially if they are in tech. The lauded benefits of Europe are grossly exaggerated for the most part.
Khalil and Ozturk broke zero laws and had permanent residency. They are now in jail essentially forever simply because the administration doesn't like what they were saying.
I suppose the current admin doesn’t believe the first amendment applies to non-citizens. I think I saw that judges are trying to block it. Do they have a point? Does the second amendment apply for non-citizens?
The Bill of Rights never mentions citizens. It was formulated as a set of restrictions on what the federal government is allowed to do. The government shall not censor opinions. The government shall not establish a national religion. The government shall not jail anyone without due process. And so on. The Bill of Rights doesn't contain any clause like, "... except for non-citizens."
What Trump is trying to do flies in the face of more than two centuries of Constitutional practice.
The threat to move is probably empty. But it’s not a threat to move to the place that is generating their head winds.
For the Dutch to allow ASML to ignore those patents would create a technology economic war between the US and EU.
I guess ASML could try and invent a different way to generate the EUV, but nobody has don't that yet - it is an extremely difficult problem (and took many years to find one solution). If those patents are the crux of US control, then presumably ASML will be researching alternatives (citations?).
China has different solutions (in particular China can ignore US patents).
From Wikipedia:
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 governmentApparently China is developing its own EUV source.
It would be ironic if ASML licenced new tech from China eh?
Of course it's quite possible that any new Chinese techniques have some relevant patents - the video says that other EUV generation techniques were investigated in Japan and Europe.
And the leading-edge fabs are dependent on suppliers other than just ASML: some of these suppliers are US companies that sell very-expensive software.
On one hand, it’s authoritarian, on the other hand not doing that might lead to fairly critical businesses becoming unaligned with the interests of the country, or leaving outright.
> What troubles him more is geopolitics. The pressure on asml began to build in 2019, when the Dutch government, at America’s urging, barred the company from exporting its advanced euv machines to China.
On the other hand, this position is understandable and it makes me wonder why the Dutch would do this and keep such limitations in place - especially after seeing how clearly hateful the current US administration is towards the EU.
The EU should look towards ensuring its own prosperity and that includes the interests and the future of the companies within it.
That's a common sense take in my eyes.
This is a paper exercise that can be resolved once and for all with paper regulations.
It seems this is because of the implicit State guarantee, and political entanglement and intervention.
Certainly, privatisation of state companies across the EU has been a disaster and no efficiency has been gained, so I wonder where the historical record you're reading is?
(Also, while a poison pill threat can be a good management decision, taking the poison pill is a seriously bad management decision. So a government can just bet on that.)