[andruby]

The example you mention is a tricky one, ASML is about as European as it is American. It is heavily subject to US export controls because its machines include US components, US software and US IP. They operate multiple R&D centers and factories in the US and employ a lot of US employees (~20%)

[throwaway2037]

    > The example you mention is a tricky one...

Let me generalise: Does your tech company use CPUs from Intel, AMD or Qualcomm, or NVidia GPUs or memory from SK Hynix, Samsung, or Micron, or harddrives/SSDs from Western Digital, Hitachi, IBM, Toshiba, etc., or motherboards from (any Taiwan manuf.)? Or anything produced by Samsung or TSMC? If yes (1000% of tech companies), then you are potentially subject to the magic wand of US sanctions and soverign interference. To be clear, do not read that last paragraph as a support of this soverign interference, only an acknowledgement of it.

The first time I heard that the US was "requesting" (surely a gun-to-head moment) that the Dutch Gov't restrict ASML exports to China, personally, I was stunned. Sure, the Netherlands and US have incredibly strong political, economic, security, and historical bonds, but I never expected US to interfere so deep into the Netherlands. And yet, the Netherlands capitulated. (Please don't read this as a criticism of NL -- they are ultimately "Real Politik" due to their population size.) If NL can fall, then so can any other nation in Europe (or Northeast Asia: JP/KR/TW), except Belarus and Russia.

[pyrale]

This line of discussion comes up often on HN, and it's really annoying. It's the equivalent of people bringing up nuclear warfare in geopolitics discussions.

Yes, people know we live in a globalized world, and yes, people know the US has ways to pressure Europe. The point of Europe's moves to host in Europe isn't to get immune from foreign influence ; it is to make interference a bit more costly and a bit less effective, in a way that doesn't cripple our society.

[libertine]

Out of curiosity, couldn't ASML replace the all of those elements with either their own development or new suppliers?

This is taking into account the worst case scenario, which isn't that unlikely to happen.

I mean, for sure there are these plans in motion already, but how hard would it be?

[oneplane]

Not really, some of the IP is core to the product and it cannot function without it. In theory if you do something like come up with a complete replacement for EUV, you could, but everyone with deep pockets has already been trying to do that without success. Same goes for the supply chains, most companies (including ASML) don't manufacture everything themselves; so components that come out of the US would need non-US suppliers, which don't always exist.

I suppose it's a case of 'technically possible, realistically infeasible'.

A more likely scenario might be either a from-scratch not-as-good machine that you can source locally (supply-chain wise) or a novel finding (which is hard to predict if it will happen and if so, when).

[throwaway2037]

Agree. This blog post about the history of ASML is absolutely brilliant: https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/how-asml-took-over-the-wo...