ASML, a $300B Dutch firm, makes the machines that make semiconductors

Apart from the different field of expertise at play (think manufacturing cooking equipment vs running a full-scale canteen), there's also environmental concerns. Looks like ASML has outsourced much of the production of key components to 3rd-party countries.

Electronics manufacturing has a considerable environmental impact (see articles about chemical soil/water pollution in china) and global north countries are happy to have others exploit their population and damage their environment in their place. This is similar to how the "recycling" industry operates.

On that you are very right.

I'm often amazed by GPS, or any of the other GNSS technologies really.

A fleck as big as a thumbnail which can communicate with multiple satellites wizzing-by to lock your location within 10s of meters. The fleck contains the antenna, the RF frontend, signal locking and tracking circuit, and a small computer to provide the navigational solution from the observables. And you get all this wonder super cheap.

The whole system, the space vehicles, the ground segment is of course very expensive, but somehow the militaries of the world decided that they will you use all of that for free. If you would write this in a sci-fi I would trash your manuscript immediately. Except somehow it is not science fiction. It is reality.

For example, the surface they are printing the chip circuits on has layers of material, say, tungsten, that have thicknesses measured in atoms. As in, 'I need a layer of tungsten 100 atoms thick'. At that scale, the surface is 'bumpy' to the point that you must re-focus each time the wafer/lens moves to the next region on the wafer. This is a mechanical adjustment at atomic scale that has to happen very fast, or you'll never get enough wafers through the machine to pay for it. The solution to just this one subsystem of moving and refocusing required a decade of R&D and dozens of scientists and engineers to get fast enough, reliable enough, repeatable enough to be useful in a production setting.

Yes, others can make a system like this, with a similar amount of R&D spend and personnel and time. They would have to move faster than ASML to ever catch them. They'd have to budget 20 years, 100s of staff and a very large capital budget. In 20 years, ASML will be that much further down the road.

Here is a short animation of the optics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skUCP2f4HIM

China can say they have a priority on domestic semiconductor production, and they can throw obscene amounts of money at the problem.

But ultimately, something that takes 10+ years to develop isn't appetizing for China's current political climate. It needs to be the best, yesterday.

Consequently, they'll continue throwing money at whoever promises results next year, and starving whoever says it can't be done but offers a realistic plan to eventual dominance.

Capitalism sucks in many ways, but decentralized command economies (national government commands, local supplies) are about the worst of all possible worlds for high knowledge, long lead time, heavy research industries.

Which is why you saw the Soviets do pretty well at heavy industry, but not so well at computers.

GPS capability delivers incredible military advantage. (See: Gulf War)

Consequently, US government funds constellation. Because money is no object vs the military advantage.

Because of the nature of GPS, receivers (devices) can more or less be iterated independently of transmitters (satellites).

US government allows civilian use (with reduced accuracy) for economic and geopolitical reasons.

Commercial market rapidly iterates on the device technology (smaller, faster, cheaper).

Transmitters are upgraded and enhanced, as expanding commercial market now justifies expense. Eventually accuracy limitations dropped.

We end up at today.