[mytailorisrich]

It has never happened in the history of the world that a company or country could maintain its technological advance indefinitely.

Either China will catch up on this or that particular technology will become obsolete. But it is certain that they won't stay behind forever (measured in a small number of decades at most).

[codeulike]

Right but if you dont say how long it will take them, youre not really saying anything.

[adrian_b]

There is no doubt that less than 10 years will be needed for China to be able to do something equivalent to what the ASML machines can do now.

What is far less certain is what ASML will be able to do at that time, i.e. if they will be able to progress significantly over the state-of-the-art of today, or they will reach a plateau.

Besides China, there is a renewed effort in Japan to become competitive again, so ASML may face in the future both Chinese and Japanese competitors.

[Danox]

5 years China 5 years Japan 10 years Korea

[mytailorisrich]

> measured in a small number of decades at most

[codeulike]

By "a small number of decades" do you mean from now, or starting from 15 years ago when the ASML Twinscan NXE:3100 made it debut?

[dublinstats]

This is kind of like saying you can prove everyone dies based on the evidence that everyone who is not currently alive has died.

You might place an upper limit using history but in this case I'd guess that limit would end up being much larger than the present semiconductor industry itself might last.

[mytailorisrich]

I'd say it is more likely than within 20 years the domestic Chinese semiconductor industry will be state-of-the-art across the full vertical and horizontal range.

There is a level of arrogance in the West that China does cheap but simple/low quality whereas this is only a stepping stone along the way. German car manufacturers went into China during the 90s with that mindset, and expecting it was forever, well they don't think that anymore...

[wincy]

I mean you’ve definitely just had technology disappear though, usually because of war. Damascus Steel was a lost military tech. We could certainly end up just accidentally (or worse, intentionally) bomb this stuff out of existence so nobody has it.