China’s ghost in the machine is haunting ASML 

It has been called “the world’s most complex machine.” Yet it looks like something from a bygone age and is the size of a “double-decker bus.” Without these monsters made by ASML, today’s high-tech world would grind to a halt.

They “print” microscopic circuits onto silicon chips that drive today’s technological society of smartphones, smart cars, such as electric vehicles, and smart weapons. They also provide the building blocks of the clean energy transformation and the artificial intelligence revolution.

In short, ASML is unique. The Dutch company based in the municipality of Veldhoven in the Netherlands is priceless. Its machines contain over one hundred thousand components, all of which have to be perfectly calibrated.

“ASML makes the only [ones] in the world capable of stenciling transistors on to chips with the precision to fit billions on a 30-centimeter wafer,” Neil Hacker, the head of partnerships at Isometric, which reviews data points using AI agents and human verifiers, said.

“To ship one requires 40 freight containers, three cargo planes, and 20 trucks. They are the world’s most complex objects,” Hacker wrote on the Substack site Works in Progress in April.

They are expected to be delivered this year to leading Chinese chipmakers.

REPORTS

Ghost in the machine:

• Now, it appears that China is poised to gatecrash the industry after being blocked from using ASML’s cutting-edge extreme ultraviolet systems.
• Reports surfaced this week that a Chinese state-run group would mass-produce advanced lithography machines, according to The Information, a tech website.

Delve deeper: “They are expected to be delivered this year to leading Chinese chipmakers,” it was reported. They would also be “an alternative source of critical equipment” amid tightening restrictions by the United States and its partners “on lithography exports.”

Big picture: Still, last year the writing, or lithographic etchings, was on the wall after China Factor reported what was described as Beijing’s “Manhattan Project.” In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists were busy building a prototype machine.

Between the lines: It was alleged that former engineers of ASML, which stands for Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography, had “worked” on the project. “Under fake names,” they had used parts from the company’s older machines.

Bottom line: “Sounds like a massive security failure by ASML and the Dutch intelligence services,” Bill Bishop, the founder of Sinocism, posted on X, formerly Twitter, at the time in response to the news.

China Factor comment: The silence from Beijing was naturally deafening. But then China has a history of technology theft. “China’s espionage ecosystem is systemic and strategic,” the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation warned.