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by dahwolf
1050 days ago
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ASML's EUV machines cannot be reverse engineered. There's over a 100K parts, several of them from exclusive suppliers. You'd have to recreate several industries from scratch or somehow bribe all suppliers. You will absolutely fail to recreate the parts at all but even then if you hypothetically would, you can't put the machine together as if it's just a few bolts. It requires a team in the know months to do it, but you're not in the know. The tolerance for error is near-zero. Installing, configuring, running the machine, both hardware and software is extraordinarily complex. None of this is a secret. The Chinese government announced a multi-billion dollar program to try and recreate such a machine from scratch. Expected timeline is 20 years with a highly uncertain outcome. ASML does not have a concern to export to China, they want to export to China but are pressured to not do so by the US government. |
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Probably not as carbon-copy. But certainly important parts, or older versions.
ASML isn't just selling a millions-dollar-machine, they sell maintenance, support, upgrades, refurbishing. All these pieces are important in themselves, not just the whole assembled machine. Any single piece that can be reversed-engineered can be a danger to their moat.
This isn't just ASML, this is any hi-tech industry. I worked in power-plants, where ABB didn't just sell us gas-turbines, they sold a package, from Swiss engineers coming twice a year to help us tune them to "we now have these nozzles that make them 1.2% more efficient in hot weather, we can come replace them". Or the story on the HN frontpage recently, where Russian airlines are running out of brakes: just imagine being, say, a Russian factory that makes, say, brakes for Tupolevs and you can reverse-engineer Airbus brakes and start making them. High margins guaranteed.
So yes: ASML is rightfully very careful with Chinese competion and espionage¹
¹ https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artikel/2280228-wat-heeft-de-c...