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ASML isn't guarding profound insights revealed by the gods requiring some sort of eternal liver pecking sacrifice to obtain. If the EU plays hardball to too gre

• romwell 3y ago
  >ASML isn't guarding profound insights revealed by the gods requiring some sort of eternal liver pecking sacrifice to obtain. As someone who's worked in semiconductors... [citation needed] on that claim. >If the EU plays hardball to too great an extent, other countries will replicate the research. If they could have, they would have. Many have been trying, and still are. >China will already have started their attempts. Not "will have". China has been trying to catch up for many years. > The EU does not have a track record of staying ahead when they tangle with Asians for tech manufacturing supremacy. You're just lumping "Asians" into one group, aren't you? China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea have very different strengths. >The EU can't parlay a temporary monopoly held by one manufacturing company into a useful strategic edge. Oh they absolutely can. So can Taiwan (and does so pretty successfully).
  • flamedoge 3y ago
    > The EU does not have a track record of staying ahead when they tangle with Asians for tech manufacturing supremacy. ASML is literally the one that won vs Japan's Canon/Nikon. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/race-technological-dominance-how-japan-almost-won-euv-amr-elharony-8avjf/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/race-technological-dominance-...
    • throwup238 3y ago
      In a consortium they started in the late 90s with Intel and a couple of other companies to license US Department of Energy EUV research from Lawrence Livermore. There’s a reason the US has control over where ASML hardware can be exported - a lot of the technology was originally developed and funded in the US.
  • postexitus 3y ago
    I am using ASML as an hypothetical example here. When there is a giant like ASML in the market, the competition is squashed out pretty quickly. Especially when the barriers of entry are so high like in fab space, the competition does not stand a chance to capture any good tenders. Pull ASML out of the equitation to "punish" Chinese- suddenly those "bug" fab companies are flourishing and winning tenders left and right and suddenly become viable businesses. Give it X years and they are competitors. Of course if this is a viable route, you may ask : Why don't China ban ASML then? They could, but of course there is going to be short term pain in impacting all levels of supply chain and therefore macro economics. They may not want to take the hard pill.
    • hilios 3y ago
      China is already banned from buying many of ASML's machines, which is why China doesn't have any leading edge fabs. They probably will be able to replicate the research and solve the manufacturing issues eventually but it took a global effort and many failed tries to get it working the first time.
• andy_ppp 3y ago
  I dunno, the issue with government picking the winners is there’s plenty of people who like money out there and sound very convincing. Even selecting the best people you still might not build what ASML have. I’m not even sure they can produce the mirrors needed for EUV let alone the laser light source and all the tens of thousands of other technologies that are in these machines. It’s extremely hard and China is in a recession and property crisis right now.
  • roenxi 3y ago
    The Chinese government attempting to pick winners is the best hope the chip embargo has; Xi Jinping is ironically the person best placed to cause it to succeed. The issue is that a Manhattan projet styled effort followed up by turning technology over to private industry is something that China could very well do and would probably be effective. Let alone the silly idea of challenging multiple countries simultaneously as was proposed at the thread root. China tried that with rare earths and failed about as quickly as could be expected; as I recall they lost a quarter of the market in short order and backed off.
    • wslh 3y ago
      I would just emphasize something obvious about different cultures. Culturally, China is really long term while the West culture is anxious (not bad, just different) and looking for short term results. China does not have problems embracing challenging and strategic endeavours knowing that the result will come out eventually.
      • roenxi 3y ago
        People say stuff like that all the time, then the most free market economy does well in the long term. Culture is important, but mainly as far as it permits people to freely help themselves prosper. The West is made up of countries that often have 40%+ of their economy made up by government spending, ie, spending that wouldn't happen under a free market. That is far more a problem as far as raw economic outcomes than long- or short- term cultures. China will collapse if someone high up in the government attempts a 2nd Leap Forward, culture matters a lot in whether they tolerate a bureaucracy with that sort of power (history hint - don't tolerate that sort of power in the bureaucracy).
• cgeier 3y ago
  > The EU does not have a track record of staying ahead when they tangle with Asians for tech manufacturing supremacy. Depends on your definition of "tech", see e.g. Airbus.
  • hardlianotion 3y ago
    I would say: "watch this space". There is a major aircraft manufacturing effort underway in China. Parent is saying "don't be complacent".
  • roenxi 3y ago
    I don't accept that example. The Aerospace industry is dominated by the Americans [0]. Challenging North America is a much harder proposition than challenge the EU. The EU doesn't have a competitive edge in that market and I doubt they'd stand up all that well if challenged, given that they were already challenged and didn't stand up well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospace_manufacturer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospace_manufacturer
  • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >see e.g. Airbus One single successful company can't sustain the tech economy of a continent. Even if they lost the commercial aviation crown after Boeing's flops, the US still has far more local champions with insane margins successful in other critical areas (military, web services, mobile, cloud, GPUs, AI, CPUs, etc) than the EU could ever dream of. I'm sure working at Airbus or ASML is nice but those two companies can't employ all of EU's tech workers and fund EU's monetary deficits, especially since both are registered in the NL tax heaven.
  • spacebanana7 3y ago
    Europe of today is nothing like the Europe of the 1970s. In the mid to late 20th century, Europe has a deep & diverse industrial base. Public infrastructure projects like high speed rail were world leading. Western Europe had a military industrial base genuinely competitive with the US.
• Log_out_ 3y ago
  China is finished, behind the propaganda poster, have some pity and compassion.
  • vdaea 3y ago
    According to some China has been finished for ten years now. When are they going to go bankrupt?
  • chimp_brain 3y ago
    I don't think China is doing as well as many Chinese might believe but this doom of China is predicted every other year. Chinese companies are making strides in battery tech ( CATL ) and robotics ( DJI, Siasun )
    • ekianjo 3y ago
      demography is their doom
      • scotty79 3y ago
        They can lose entire countries worth of people and still have a plenty of engineers to run circles around others.
        • ekianjo 3y ago
          maybe but a time bomb is still a time bomb
  • suslik 3y ago
    Why is China finished? They have manufacturing, talent, and a large internal market - and whatever financial problems they might be facing are rather virtual.
    • ekianjo 3y ago
      and no babies so demography is going to hit them really, really hard
• throwaway2037 3y ago
  > other countries will replicate the research Why hasn't Japan done it yet? As I understand, ASML is the only maker of EUV etching machines at this point.
• boltzmann-brain 3y ago
  > other countries will replicate the research How did that go for China and Russia during the last... 20 years of them throwing all their money and brain power at it? No, ASML is guarding profound insights. I run a community for silicon valley veterans from areas like silicon design, manufacturing, hardware design, top-tier testing equipment, military and research lab prototyping, etc. The stuff ASML is doing is night on impossible, and even the brightest minds I know in that community find it hard to begin to imagine the minute details that really make ASML's tech stack a possibility as opposed to a flight of fancy. There's a very good reason why the powers that be decided to move heaven and earth to get TSMC out of Taiwan and onto safer ground. This knowledge is at the very edge of what we know about physics and manufacturing. There's no replicating it, there's only losing it and starting again from scratch with no genius insight at all. I hope ASML has something like an internal journal, like oldschool HP or Bell Systems, and one day they'll release it, because it will revolutionize what we know about a lot of practical engineering, even if by then it's 30 years behind the curve of what they're doing at that point.
  • roenxi 3y ago
    The US dropped the atomic bomb in 1945. The USSR replicated their efforts by 1949, and both had ICBMs by the 1960s. The Chinese were late starters figuring the tech out by the 64s. It is likely that nano-fabrication is harder than the atomic bomb - but betting on the Chinese not figuring this out just seems overoptomistic. They can bribe people. They can hire people. They can spy. They have some of the brightest scientists and engineers. They have enormous market, military and political incentives. They know what they are targeting and the tolerances they need. There is a good chance they crack this nut. > How did that go for China and Russia during the last... 20 years of them throwing all their money and brain power at it? ASML wasn't causing trouble until the Trump sanctions of 2018, up until then SMIC could just buy machines off them. The situation is different now and the research efforts will have kicked up a notch.
• ecf 3y ago
  If it really was so easy then don’t you think every country would have their own ASML? The economic incentives are there. They’ve BEEN there for decades. To think China doesn’t have an equivalent just because they haven’t cared enough yet is laughable.