eventually, the laws of physics began to intervene. The cost of shrinking the circuitry skyrocketed, and miniaturization slowed. Making breakthroughs became a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, requiring ever thinner beams of light, moving in smaller and smaller wavelengths, to produce ever smaller circuits. And ASML’s machines, with their special lens coatings and innovative light sources, became the only ones that could effectively produce these types of chips at scale. By the time Rutte came to the White House to see Biden, the firm’s machines could produce chips with circuits that are only
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