The EUV "lightbulb" was invented in the US and the patents are owned by the US government. For the Dutch to allow ASML to ignore those patents would create a t

The EUV "lightbulb" was invented in the US and the patents are owned by the US government. 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 government