[Lucasoato]

> There is a reason why ASML's next-generation research photolithography machine is currently being installed and developed in upstate New York, and not somewhere in the Netherlands. The same reason that Cymer is still in San Diego instead of being relocated to Europe.

Why is the Netherlands government even allowing this?

[grumbelbart2]

The supply chain both in parts for their machines, but also in terms of research and technology for new machines is very deep and very international. If the US states that a technology can only be used by ASML if they keep R&D in the US, then there is no easy alternative for ASML.

That is true not only for ASML, but for the semiconductor industry in general. The number of smaller, specialized companies for certain tools, chemicals and software is staggering. And they sit all over the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and Korea.

[UltraSane]

One of the best examples of this is how TOTO the toilet company makes the electrostatic ceramic wafer chucks that hold wafers during processing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIB49e_r1OI

[arjie]

The entire multinational effort is in US-Europe-E.Asian countries which are a coordinated allied bloc. The Netherlands allows it because they are entirely aligned.

Strong mutual defense agreements cover four out of the five crucial countries here (NATO, Anpo, MDT US/ROK) and the last (Taiwan) has arms sales assurances.

It’s not like these are strongly opposed nations or anything. Part of the same fleet in some sense.

[Zigurd]

2023 called...

[toast0]

Can't undo a 2013 tech sharing agreement because you got a call in 2023...

[Zigurd]

Technically NATO is much harder to undo, and yet there we go.

[toast0]

It's much easier to discontinue military (and other) cooperation than it is to unshare knowledge.

[hunterpayne]

Russia invaded in 2022, Trump was elected in late 2024 and took office in 2025. The out of context quote that kicked all this off was in 2017 or 2018. Somehow you picked the one year out of the last 10 or so that didn't matter for any of this.

The really wild thing about this whole narrative is how unlikely this entire sequence of events was. Let's review:

1) Trump gives some rambling answer to an Estonian journalist in 2017 (or 2018) in which he says about 4 different things, all of which conflict with each other.

2) That journalist clips the answer to make it sound like Trump wants to leave NATO.

3) European leaders lose their mind and for the first time in 35 years actually up their military spending. Something that every US president since Bush Sr has made a major foreign policy goal that ever single administration failed at.

4) So completely by mistake, a journalist nobody has ever heard of, handed Trump the biggest foreign policy win for any US president since Bush Sr.

5) Russia invades Ukraine

6) Sweden and Finland join NATO

7) Trump wins the 2024 election and cuts off some of the Ukrainian aid (but not intelligence sharing).

8) The removal of US limitations on Ukraine allows them to strike Russian oil infrastructure.

9) Russia can no longer afford to fund their war in the way they had been.

10) Ukraine is now actually winning.

So somehow, Trump has gotten a huge foreign policy win and helped turn around the war in Ukraine completely by accident. Its like watching a cow talk.

[hparadiz]

Not by accident. By the immense sacrifice of the Ukrainian people and it's armed forces coupled with US goals just happening to align on Iran. I somehow doubt the Ukrainians mind very much that shahed production is now pivoted towards targets closer to Iran than to Ukraine.

[hunterpayne]

I mean Trump didn't intend to help. But somehow NATO is in a better state and Ukraine is winning. Its only in the largely imaginary political narrative where NATO is somehow weaker. What is weaker is the credibility of several European leaders. And nobody here thinks that this was some master plan or 10D chess by Trump.

[UltraSane]

Trump is Mr Magoo

[selimthegrim]

Abdul Aziz Trump

[vlovich123]

Because ASML acquired the US company that created this tech and the agreement for allowing Netherlands to do so was that the tech and know how remain in the US.

[shrubble]

The EUV lithography process and other pieces that comprise what ASML sells was developed with US government funding, and it remains encumbered by that. The US government thus has veto power over the tech, and thus over ASML.

[throw1234567891]

Because the EUV light source is an invention originated in the USA and therefore it is under US export controls. No light source, no machine.

[kube-system]

It wasn't just invented in the US, it was co-invented by the US government itself.

https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1413999

[saidnooneever]

if they dont allow it ASML will move away and they have nothing.