Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology

by Chris Miller

That a Dutch company, ASML, had commercialized a technology pioneered in America’s National Labs and largely funded by Intel would undoubtedly have rankled America’s economic nationalists, had any been aware of the history of lithography or of EUV technology. Yet ASML’s EUV tools weren’t really Dutch, though they were largely assembled in the Netherlands. Crucial components came from Cymer in California and Zeiss and Trumpf in Germany. And even these German firms relied on critical pieces of U.S.-produced equipment. The point is that, rather than a single country being able to claim pride of ownership regarding these miraculous tools, they are the product of many countries. A tool with hundreds of thousands of parts has many fathers. “Will it work?” Andy Grove had asked John Carruthers, before investing his first $200 million in EUV. After three decades of investment, billions of dollars, a series of technological innovations, and the establishment of one of the world’s most complex supply chains, by the mid-2010s, ASML’s EUV tools were finally ready to be deployed in the world’s most advanced chip fabs.