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Comment by laughing_man | Hacker News Reader

Isn't Europe the source of almost all the tooling that goes into brand new fabs?

It's the one exception in the semiconductor supply chain where Europe is still leading. For all other parts of the value creation Europe is either a niche player at best or completely absent, well into the actual application layer.

And the bits that go into those machines are themselves globally distributed.

Nah, according to Hacker News Europe does nothing except exist and make up rules by 'bureaucrats'.

Laptop sticker "This machine feeds bureaucrats". /s

It's the lack of 996 grindset holding Europe back.

If only European bureaucrats mortgaged their entire economy on 500 AI scam companies that never produce any profit and sold off their entire manufacturing base to their main adversary. This is how real superpowers roll.

I think chinnese already made their own "ASML"

With very bad results. I was walking a fab in China a few years ago: all machines are German, Japanese and Dutch. I asked why they don't have Chinese ones: the cto said they exist for the German and Japanese machines but they break much faster so it is not worth it and the asml machines are not there at all in any type of competitive form. It will happen, just not yet I guess.

>the cto said they exist for the German and Japanese machines but they break much faster

Japanese cars would also break down much faster than US made cars in the 1950s, but eventually they figured out reliability and overtook US competition. What are the odds Chinese companies can repat this playbook?

They're also a critical player in supplying small drone parts to both sides in Russia Ukraine war. Maybe not the most reliable parts, but the scale is insane.

btw, "Made in Germany" was introduced in 1887 as a warning label so British consumers could distinguish cheap German knockoffs from British products.

We quickly improved product quality, and suddenly "Made in Germany" was a sign of quality. The same happened with Japanese products, with Korean products and the same will happen with China.

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