The answer is, of course, yes. What is there to stop them? Sure, it's difficult -- but where there's a will, and where the resources of China are involved, there is most assuredly a way.
I remember when their cars were a joke, and when their cellphones were cheap trash. Now I don't think I'd buy a non-Chinese new car or cellphone, lol.
The usual game plan of getting the technology they want to copy by offering cheap and highly skilled Chinese labour and access to the Chinese market by building the machines there is not available to them, so the likelihood is this will take longer and be more difficult than other implementations. There's hundreds of other technologies needed other than the lasers and the mirrors and the software and the experience running these machines at scale. I think to make more than a handful of GPUs they will be behind for at least 5 years.
This doesn't mean they will always be behind though.
If I was ASML I would have an AI generated honeypot of techniques that are plausible but incorrect for China to go after on this and make sure you get hacked by them.
My ASML supervisor literally said to me. circa 2006 (when I asked why we didn't shred our engineering papers): "With all the trouble we have getting these things to work, we should give our notes to the competitors to slow them down!"
It has recently been reporting that China is cutting back foreign-language programmes in universities because AI translation is seen as the way of the future. So, in their view everyone will soon be reading science textbooks, whether of Chinese provenance or not, in any language.
The problem with not learning languages is that it restricts you to computer-mediated communication. If you learn other languages than your own, even at a fairly basic level, there is a whole world of social interaction and culture out there that just can't be accessed with a machine in the way.
This isn't to say that automated translation is bad, I use it extensively, but not all interaction worth having is online.
The expectation is that AI translation will also become quasi-realtime, so for in-person interactions, too.
Many cultures will probably much rather interact with a foreigner speaking proficient AI translation, than a language-learner speaking with a poor accent and constant grammatical imperfections. Go to the Netherlands now as a Dutch learner who hasn't reached B2 level, for example, and local people won't like it, it just wastes their time compared to using English.
I happily go abroad and speak with my hosts in my rudimentary German, and we are all happy. Sometimes we shift to their slightly-less-rudimentary English, and that's good too. Although we sometimes resort to machine translation to look up a specific word or phrase when we are both stuck, we have never felt the need to use real-time spoken machine translation.
The US has successfully stopped them from acquiring the machines. That's not the same as stopping them from acquiring the capability to make them. On the contrary.
there is reason why they call trump in China Chuan Jianguo" (川建国) aka "Trump the Nation Builder", though not sure Americans would like to know which nation he is building and which one he destroys
Before I left China in 2016, I had lots of chats with Chinese coworkers who liked Trump a lot more than I did. I guess Trump just comes across as a strong leader in China even if he is way more crude than a typical Chinese leader who acts strong but speaks diplomatically.
ASML of the Netherlands agreed to go along with past US requests to not supply China with bleeding edge machines, so China is making do with the older models while working hard to break the non-US hardware monopoly.
Washington, via the recent MATCH Act, has requested ASML to not supply or maintain any of the older equipment.
ASML has travelled to Washington to tell US Congress to take a long walk off a short pier.
> I remember when their cars were a joke, and when their cellphones were cheap trash.
Any country can make cars and phones now if they REALLY want to, they just don't because they wouldn't be competitive on the global market at performance and at scale. But not anyone can just make an EUV machine if they want to.
Becoming a leader in commodity white goods like a phones and cars is a different beast than EUV machines. The challenges are not even remotely comparable.
China doesn't have a Zeiss, it doesn't have an ASM, it doesn't have a Cymer, it doesn't have a Trumpf, and it doesn't have a dozen other domestic competitors to western suppliers of critical parts that make an EUV machine.
And each of those suppliers, like Zeiss for example, is a leader because it has decades of expertise that can't be speed-run, even with IP theft. So before China can have an ASML it first needs a Zeiss. So ask yourself where is their Zeiss and are they beating the west's Zeiss?
This is a Manhattan Project-level endeavour, and most countries would not be capable of it. China, however, is. Even though it lacks the expertise to do all these specific things to the Western cutting edge level right now, it has the resources, the overall technology and engineering base, and the determination to achieve the goal with the full power of the Chinese economy behind it. Not to mention industrial espionage.
It might take them a decade, but they'll get there. Working on the basis that you can somehow stop China rather than merely delaying them is a comforting illusion.
>This is a Manhattan Project-level endeavour, and most countries would not be capable of it. China, however, is.
Where's the proof in that? China can't even create jet engines that outperform dated soviet designs even when they bought their IP. Some things are just almost impossible to do without the right people at the right time, and you can spend virtually unlimited money and still never get there.
Russia does not have a 5th generation engine core in even the validation phase.
China has a 5th generation engine core the WS-15, it has not only passed validation but is currently in mass production.
A true 5th generation engine core allows true supercruise
You can see the gap between the F-22, J-20 and Su-57
The F-22 supercruises from mach 1.5 -> mach 1.8 (This is because they have 5th gen engines, and is it burns its fuel stores)
The J-20 supercruises at mach 1.4 -> mach 1.8 (This is because the J-20 has a much larger internal fuel load, vs the F-22 as it burns this fuel it speeds up)
The Su-57 super cruises at mach 1.3 -> mach 1.5 (This is because it has a 4th gen engine, the actual 5th gen engine intended to power the SU-57 is stuck in development hell the Izdeliye 30 (or AL-51F1) so Russia put a souped up 4th gen engine inside the SU-57 the AL-41F1 which is the same core as the AL-31F. If they do complete their 5th gen engine the SU-57 is expected to supercruise at mach 1.8-> mach 2.0 as it burns up its fuel. Su-57 accepts more stealth penalties in exchange for superior aerodynamics.
It has the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics (CIOMP)
Founded 1952. One of its things:
4-Metre Silicon Carbide (SiC) Mirror: CIOMP successfully manufactured the world's largest single-piece Silicon Carbide mirror blank. It provides the optical backbone for high-resolution space telescope imaging systems
Apparently carbide mirrors are used for EUV lithography.
They have more than 1 billion people that are getting more and more educated, they have the capital and will to invest in it, they will get there eventually.
The "moat" we're talking about with private companies is that it's very hard for competitors to get enough funding to compete, and private investors are unwilling to invest in a company that will compete with a big established player. That's completely different when a state has a strategy and decides to invest to achieve a goal.
They're already capable to build microprocessors completely in-house. This is precisely the cutting edge we're talking about.
This matters for AI datacenters in particular, if they want to be autonomous in building them they need to be able to build advanced microprocessors locally.
Despite rumours to the contrary the world does need things that aren't useful for modern AI codebases still, I'd really appreciate it right now if China could get some fabs going that just manufactured RAM, storage, and maybe a selection of chips that the big ones have given up on because its more profitable to endlessly churn out GPUs and NPUs.
Constant blaming and framing others of stealing. State support, unfair practices etc is not gonna help you become successful. China is now part of the game. You better work with them.
So are modern Western cars - and arguably also phones.
If I'm forced to drive in a bug-riddled impossible-to-repair privacy-invading spaceship either way, why would I go for the overpriced outdated Western one rather than the affordable innovative Chinese one?
I would prefer a boring 2000s car with an electric drivetrain, but it's not like anyone is making them...
About privacy invasion, it works for all countries in the world.
Vendor-lock is quite high, possibly higher in the US.
Look at iPhone, hardware is behind, restricted, unauditable privacy and questionable software in terms of performance (especially starting iOS 26, where you lost the choice for Liquid Glass).
Impossible to reasonably sync AirPods or watches, Macbook or choose the firmware version.
In comparison, the irony is that China offers the freedom (like with Qwen).
On these supposedly evil Chinese devices (phones, headphones, watches, etc), you have an open platform with great hardware, that you can modify as much as you want, and the only people who restrict you is... Google (making sure you cannot root without losing to important apps, so technically you can root, but practically you can't).
All the claims about "China = bad hardware and bad software" were true 20 years ago, but this is not the case anymore.
That being said, should certainly be quite cautious about default setup... you have US surveillance, PLUS, Chinese surveillance.
open platform? what Chinese phones have as easily unlockable bootloader as pixels? thanks for info
btw after one pixel with swollen battery I'm never buying one again, but I have to admit they have great cameras, reasonable dimensions and easily unlockable bootloader, sadly it's wrote pointless with faulty unreliable hardware and shit bare bone software
their phones are second rate to what - pixels with exploding batteries and faulty displays or Samsungs unable to fix their slow quality cameras for the last decade? sorry, if I want the best overall Android phone the choice nowadays is clear
as for the cars, I'd agree maybe compared to most western brands, but the question is whether is worth paying 30-100% extra for only slightly better western car
Have had two Xiaomi phones in a row, I don't see the second rate.
My in law has a BYD Seagull, fail to see how it lags compared to similarly priced cars.
Chinese cars are incredibly popular in Europe, because they are better cars at the same price tag, even the more expensive ones.
I think it's asinine to think their high end manufacturing is crap, keeps us non competitive, let alone ignoring most of our stuff or large parts of it already comes from China.
And it has nothing to do with wages, modern high end manufacturing is highly automated and skilled engineers are as expensive as in southern or central Europe.
I would need some source that Chinese cars are sold at a loss outside China, because I seriously doubt it.
It's like those people thinking Aliexpress/Temu products are subsidized by Chinese gov, not realizing that Ali/Temu is extremely expensive and you can buy products there for like 1/2 - 1/10th of their price in Chinese online shops (especially Pinduoduo), people claiming China is subsidizing this and that don't realize how cheap is to produce products. Been in China last summer, bought 4 big suitcases full of things mostly from Pinduoduo.
The comparison with cars and cellphones falls short for ASML machines. The former categories involved western companies transferring IP to Chinese counterparts.
So far, the Chinese have succeeded in stealing IP from ASML, but this is complexity in its own category. Also, the whole supply chain is part of the solution. That is a lot to copy.
But I agree that, given enough time, China should be able to. But Volvo en Tesla handing over IP themselves, and phone makers letting China produce and assemble phones (maybe not as extensive these days anymore) is something different.
EDIT: I mentioned Saab when I meant Volvo. Not sure if people downvoted based on that, I have no info on Saab so consider that as a mistake.
people overstate complexity of ASmL machines. They are not impossible to make or use, specialist work sure but its possible. The only reason why no one does it is: 1) IP laws, 2) Costs
China has Money and Smart people. (and very effective corporate / nationstate espionage) so they can most certainly reproduce advanced machines.
They might not have incentive yet to do it because it will not make them popular, and potentially output products would be banned on US/EU. They play a long game and want US and EU consumers to ask tehir governments to please allow the chinese products.. so their market share is safe and stable.
I think once there is enough incentive for them they would do it. They simply do not want to do it currently.
Why do you think they don't want to do it? I find that a weird statement, and your given reasons don't make sense to me. This is one of their core programs, and as part of that have taken over some IP via espionage programs. China is actively trying to build one for quite some time now.
> people overstate complexity of ASmL machines. They are not impossible to make or use, specialist work sure but its possible. The only reason why no one does it is: 1) IP laws, 2) Costs
Citation needed, if these were the real roadblocks China would have had the machines by now already. Even with all the parts at hands (don't forget: from a total of 5100 suppliers) the Chinese couldn't assemble one. It is complex with a lot of know-how involved.
The real reasons are: enormous complexity, lots of original research involved, deeply specialized supply chains. Recreating that takes lots of time and money. Even if you cut corners and steal IP. So that leaves China with 'time' as the real impediment. And who knows, AI will be a boost to get to that goal?
You are aware that ASML is a small company prior to EUV?
And they only allocated a small number of employees and resources to bring their first EUV machine to market?
ASML had 7,685 employees prior to their EUV success (Including contracts), of these 7,685 employees only 2500 were engineers. ASML put half of these engineers to develop the NXE:3100 and they only spent 10 billion dollars.
So total resources = 1250 engineers, 10 billion to make EUV a reality and 13 years.
So yes the complexity and difficulty of EUV machines is vastly overstated. The amount of resources spent on it is coins found in couch cushions to huge mega corps.
Comments
The answer is, of course, yes. What is there to stop them? Sure, it's difficult -- but where there's a will, and where the resources of China are involved, there is most assuredly a way.
I remember when their cars were a joke, and when their cellphones were cheap trash. Now I don't think I'd buy a non-Chinese new car or cellphone, lol.
The usual game plan of getting the technology they want to copy by offering cheap and highly skilled Chinese labour and access to the Chinese market by building the machines there is not available to them, so the likelihood is this will take longer and be more difficult than other implementations. There's hundreds of other technologies needed other than the lasers and the mirrors and the software and the experience running these machines at scale. I think to make more than a handful of GPUs they will be behind for at least 5 years.
This doesn't mean they will always be behind though.
If I was ASML I would have an AI generated honeypot of techniques that are plausible but incorrect for China to go after on this and make sure you get hacked by them.
My ASML supervisor literally said to me. circa 2006 (when I asked why we didn't shred our engineering papers): "With all the trouble we have getting these things to work, we should give our notes to the competitors to slow them down!"
We'll soon be reading science textbooks in Chinese.
It has recently been reporting that China is cutting back foreign-language programmes in universities because AI translation is seen as the way of the future. So, in their view everyone will soon be reading science textbooks, whether of Chinese provenance or not, in any language.
I think they are onto something, language learning is quickly shifting into a hobby category (I don't mean it negatively)
The problem with not learning languages is that it restricts you to computer-mediated communication. If you learn other languages than your own, even at a fairly basic level, there is a whole world of social interaction and culture out there that just can't be accessed with a machine in the way.
This isn't to say that automated translation is bad, I use it extensively, but not all interaction worth having is online.
The expectation is that AI translation will also become quasi-realtime, so for in-person interactions, too.
Many cultures will probably much rather interact with a foreigner speaking proficient AI translation, than a language-learner speaking with a poor accent and constant grammatical imperfections. Go to the Netherlands now as a Dutch learner who hasn't reached B2 level, for example, and local people won't like it, it just wastes their time compared to using English.
I happily go abroad and speak with my hosts in my rudimentary German, and we are all happy. Sometimes we shift to their slightly-less-rudimentary English, and that's good too. Although we sometimes resort to machine translation to look up a specific word or phrase when we are both stuck, we have never felt the need to use real-time spoken machine translation.
"What is there to stop them?" Washington for sure is trying their very best and has so far been quite successful.
The US has successfully stopped them from acquiring the machines. That's not the same as stopping them from acquiring the capability to make them. On the contrary.
there is reason why they call trump in China Chuan Jianguo" (川建国) aka "Trump the Nation Builder", though not sure Americans would like to know which nation he is building and which one he destroys
Before I left China in 2016, I had lots of chats with Chinese coworkers who liked Trump a lot more than I did. I guess Trump just comes across as a strong leader in China even if he is way more crude than a typical Chinese leader who acts strong but speaks diplomatically.
Trump has done more for Chinese sovereignty and autonomy than any president in recent memory. No wonder he's making the world great again.
ASML of the Netherlands agreed to go along with past US requests to not supply China with bleeding edge machines, so China is making do with the older models while working hard to break the non-US hardware monopoly.
Washington, via the recent MATCH Act, has requested ASML to not supply or maintain any of the older equipment.
ASML has travelled to Washington to tell US Congress to take a long walk off a short pier.
If history is a guide, the Dutch will do what the US asks of them.
Sadly yes, wish we'd just told them to fuck off and make a deal with China, they are the future - but we seem to be very scared of daddy.
Why, so China can copy the technology and produce their one 5 years later?
So the Dutch can make more money and pay less for ai, memory, cpus etc that currently is being monopolized by big tech.
Its not impossible but If it was that easy the Americans and Taiwanese would have already done that.
They are all economically aligned with the Netherlands in a way mainland China never will be.
Having a reliable supplier in such a time will be a deterrent to building their home grown alternative.
>The answer is, of course, yes.
No, not in this case.
> I remember when their cars were a joke, and when their cellphones were cheap trash.
Any country can make cars and phones now if they REALLY want to, they just don't because they wouldn't be competitive on the global market at performance and at scale. But not anyone can just make an EUV machine if they want to.
Becoming a leader in commodity white goods like a phones and cars is a different beast than EUV machines. The challenges are not even remotely comparable.
China doesn't have a Zeiss, it doesn't have an ASM, it doesn't have a Cymer, it doesn't have a Trumpf, and it doesn't have a dozen other domestic competitors to western suppliers of critical parts that make an EUV machine.
And each of those suppliers, like Zeiss for example, is a leader because it has decades of expertise that can't be speed-run, even with IP theft. So before China can have an ASML it first needs a Zeiss. So ask yourself where is their Zeiss and are they beating the west's Zeiss?
This is a Manhattan Project-level endeavour, and most countries would not be capable of it. China, however, is. Even though it lacks the expertise to do all these specific things to the Western cutting edge level right now, it has the resources, the overall technology and engineering base, and the determination to achieve the goal with the full power of the Chinese economy behind it. Not to mention industrial espionage.
It might take them a decade, but they'll get there. Working on the basis that you can somehow stop China rather than merely delaying them is a comforting illusion.
>This is a Manhattan Project-level endeavour, and most countries would not be capable of it. China, however, is.
Where's the proof in that? China can't even create jet engines that outperform dated soviet designs even when they bought their IP. Some things are just almost impossible to do without the right people at the right time, and you can spend virtually unlimited money and still never get there.
China has already beat Russia in jet engines,
Russia does not have a 5th generation engine core in even the validation phase.
China has a 5th generation engine core the WS-15, it has not only passed validation but is currently in mass production.
A true 5th generation engine core allows true supercruise
You can see the gap between the F-22, J-20 and Su-57
The F-22 supercruises from mach 1.5 -> mach 1.8 (This is because they have 5th gen engines, and is it burns its fuel stores)
The J-20 supercruises at mach 1.4 -> mach 1.8 (This is because the J-20 has a much larger internal fuel load, vs the F-22 as it burns this fuel it speeds up)
The Su-57 super cruises at mach 1.3 -> mach 1.5 (This is because it has a 4th gen engine, the actual 5th gen engine intended to power the SU-57 is stuck in development hell the Izdeliye 30 (or AL-51F1) so Russia put a souped up 4th gen engine inside the SU-57 the AL-41F1 which is the same core as the AL-31F. If they do complete their 5th gen engine the SU-57 is expected to supercruise at mach 1.8-> mach 2.0 as it burns up its fuel. Su-57 accepts more stealth penalties in exchange for superior aerodynamics.
Russia is 30 years behind the west. China isn't competing with Russia, they're competing with the west.
It has the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics (CIOMP)
Founded 1952. One of its things:
Apparently carbide mirrors are used for EUV lithography.
Nature article + pic of mirror https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-022-01050-w
They have more than 1 billion people that are getting more and more educated, they have the capital and will to invest in it, they will get there eventually.
The "moat" we're talking about with private companies is that it's very hard for competitors to get enough funding to compete, and private investors are unwilling to invest in a company that will compete with a big established player. That's completely different when a state has a strategy and decides to invest to achieve a goal.
The problem is that their government doesn't let them go anywhere but into factories, no matter the education.
They were promised upwards mobility, but their leaders need factory workers, more than ever.
Huh? Where did you get your sources?
Chinese factories are more automated than ever. More and more skilled chinese do skilled white collar work not repetitive factory assembly work.
Is cutting edge even necessary? If you could build the last two nodes 10x as cheaply that would be way more valuable.
They're already capable to build microprocessors completely in-house. This is precisely the cutting edge we're talking about.
This matters for AI datacenters in particular, if they want to be autonomous in building them they need to be able to build advanced microprocessors locally.
Cheaper isn’t even required; just better scalability.
If you have stolen IP designed for cutting edge processes you need about the same tech to produce said IP.
Producing 10x of 10-years old GPUs is not exactly useful for modern AI codebases for instance.
Despite rumours to the contrary the world does need things that aren't useful for modern AI codebases still, I'd really appreciate it right now if China could get some fabs going that just manufactured RAM, storage, and maybe a selection of chips that the big ones have given up on because its more profitable to endlessly churn out GPUs and NPUs.
Constant blaming and framing others of stealing. State support, unfair practices etc is not gonna help you become successful. China is now part of the game. You better work with them.
I wouldn't mind getting 1080ti s , kaby lake cores or gigabytes of DDR4 for cheap.
Their cars and phones are still second rate. They are, however, cheap enough to be good value.
So are modern Western cars - and arguably also phones.
If I'm forced to drive in a bug-riddled impossible-to-repair privacy-invading spaceship either way, why would I go for the overpriced outdated Western one rather than the affordable innovative Chinese one?
I would prefer a boring 2000s car with an electric drivetrain, but it's not like anyone is making them...
About privacy invasion, it works for all countries in the world.
Vendor-lock is quite high, possibly higher in the US.
Look at iPhone, hardware is behind, restricted, unauditable privacy and questionable software in terms of performance (especially starting iOS 26, where you lost the choice for Liquid Glass).
Impossible to reasonably sync AirPods or watches, Macbook or choose the firmware version.
In comparison, the irony is that China offers the freedom (like with Qwen).
On these supposedly evil Chinese devices (phones, headphones, watches, etc), you have an open platform with great hardware, that you can modify as much as you want, and the only people who restrict you is... Google (making sure you cannot root without losing to important apps, so technically you can root, but practically you can't).
All the claims about "China = bad hardware and bad software" were true 20 years ago, but this is not the case anymore.
That being said, should certainly be quite cautious about default setup... you have US surveillance, PLUS, Chinese surveillance.
open platform? what Chinese phones have as easily unlockable bootloader as pixels? thanks for info
btw after one pixel with swollen battery I'm never buying one again, but I have to admit they have great cameras, reasonable dimensions and easily unlockable bootloader, sadly it's wrote pointless with faulty unreliable hardware and shit bare bone software
What have you tried so far on a daily basis to say this?
Have you tried latest Huawei models?
By the way, Foxconn makes iPhones, does it count as Chinese quality or not?
their phones are second rate to what - pixels with exploding batteries and faulty displays or Samsungs unable to fix their slow quality cameras for the last decade? sorry, if I want the best overall Android phone the choice nowadays is clear
as for the cars, I'd agree maybe compared to most western brands, but the question is whether is worth paying 30-100% extra for only slightly better western car
Have had two Xiaomi phones in a row, I don't see the second rate.
My in law has a BYD Seagull, fail to see how it lags compared to similarly priced cars.
Chinese cars are incredibly popular in Europe, because they are better cars at the same price tag, even the more expensive ones.
I think it's asinine to think their high end manufacturing is crap, keeps us non competitive, let alone ignoring most of our stuff or large parts of it already comes from China.
And it has nothing to do with wages, modern high end manufacturing is highly automated and skilled engineers are as expensive as in southern or central Europe.
Chinese cars are exactly same story as Japanese and Korean cars, first they ignored them, then they laughed at them, then they won
Chinese cars were sold at a loss until very recently, though, and now they are struggling. So it's a bit different than Japan and Korea.
I would need some source that Chinese cars are sold at a loss outside China, because I seriously doubt it.
It's like those people thinking Aliexpress/Temu products are subsidized by Chinese gov, not realizing that Ali/Temu is extremely expensive and you can buy products there for like 1/2 - 1/10th of their price in Chinese online shops (especially Pinduoduo), people claiming China is subsidizing this and that don't realize how cheap is to produce products. Been in China last summer, bought 4 big suitcases full of things mostly from Pinduoduo.
The comparison with cars and cellphones falls short for ASML machines. The former categories involved western companies transferring IP to Chinese counterparts. So far, the Chinese have succeeded in stealing IP from ASML, but this is complexity in its own category. Also, the whole supply chain is part of the solution. That is a lot to copy.
But I agree that, given enough time, China should be able to. But Volvo en Tesla handing over IP themselves, and phone makers letting China produce and assemble phones (maybe not as extensive these days anymore) is something different.
EDIT: I mentioned Saab when I meant Volvo. Not sure if people downvoted based on that, I have no info on Saab so consider that as a mistake.
people overstate complexity of ASmL machines. They are not impossible to make or use, specialist work sure but its possible. The only reason why no one does it is: 1) IP laws, 2) Costs
China has Money and Smart people. (and very effective corporate / nationstate espionage) so they can most certainly reproduce advanced machines.
They might not have incentive yet to do it because it will not make them popular, and potentially output products would be banned on US/EU. They play a long game and want US and EU consumers to ask tehir governments to please allow the chinese products.. so their market share is safe and stable.
I think once there is enough incentive for them they would do it. They simply do not want to do it currently.
Why do you think they don't want to do it? I find that a weird statement, and your given reasons don't make sense to me. This is one of their core programs, and as part of that have taken over some IP via espionage programs. China is actively trying to build one for quite some time now.
Citation needed, if these were the real roadblocks China would have had the machines by now already. Even with all the parts at hands (don't forget: from a total of 5100 suppliers) the Chinese couldn't assemble one. It is complex with a lot of know-how involved.The real reasons are: enormous complexity, lots of original research involved, deeply specialized supply chains. Recreating that takes lots of time and money. Even if you cut corners and steal IP. So that leaves China with 'time' as the real impediment. And who knows, AI will be a boost to get to that goal?
You are aware that ASML is a small company prior to EUV?
And they only allocated a small number of employees and resources to bring their first EUV machine to market?
ASML had 7,685 employees prior to their EUV success (Including contracts), of these 7,685 employees only 2500 were engineers. ASML put half of these engineers to develop the NXE:3100 and they only spent 10 billion dollars.
So total resources = 1250 engineers, 10 billion to make EUV a reality and 13 years.
So yes the complexity and difficulty of EUV machines is vastly overstated. The amount of resources spent on it is coins found in couch cushions to huge mega corps.