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EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

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Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#201
post #143

The EU is simply too scared to actually put it's foot down. If they really want to, they can just limit the export of ASML machines only to companies that have at least one of their fabs here in the EU. But they won't. In stead they will just handover €30 billion of public money to multinational corporations with market caps larger than the yearly GDP of some EU countries. Edit: For clarity, I'm not suggesting bannin…

> they can just limit the export of ASML machines only to companies that have a fab here in the EU This kills the crab. Specifically, that would force the development of a (probably taxpayer-funded) US competitor. Even at the cost of delaying the shrink cycle by a few years.

Why? Setting up one of the n sites a company operates on EU turf would certainly be easier than avoiding ASML altogether. How would it force setting up a competitor? There's a huge difference between "can't use outside" and "can't use exclusively outside".

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#202

So you don’t have to click through: “ The goal of the EU’s $43 billion Chips Act of achieving a 20% world market share for European producers by 2030”

One wonders how much of it is incompetence and how much just plain corruption. Anyone remember the glorious 5-year plan to build a European Google? I think they named it Quaero.

It wasn't to compete with Google: "Quaero was not intended to be a text-based search engine but was mainly meant for multimedia search." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero. Its budget was also less than 1% of this chip initiative's.

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#203
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ASML isn't guarding profound insights revealed by the gods requiring some sort of eternal liver pecking sacrifice to obtain. If the EU plays hardball to too great an extent, other countries will replicate the research. China will already have started their attempts. It isn't crazy to expect them to achieve success single handedly. If all of Asia starts mucking in the EU will get crushed. The EU does not have a track…

China is finished, behind the propaganda poster, have some pity and compassion.

Why is China finished? They have manufacturing, talent, and a large internal market - and whatever financial problems they might be facing are rather virtual.

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#204
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ASML isn't guarding profound insights revealed by the gods requiring some sort of eternal liver pecking sacrifice to obtain. If the EU plays hardball to too great an extent, other countries will replicate the research. China will already have started their attempts. It isn't crazy to expect them to achieve success single handedly. If all of Asia starts mucking in the EU will get crushed. The EU does not have a track…

I dunno, the issue with government picking the winners is there’s plenty of people who like money out there and sound very convincing. Even selecting the best people you still might not build what ASML have. I’m not even sure they can produce the mirrors needed for EUV let alone the laser light source and all the tens of thousands of other technologies that are in these machines. It’s extremely hard and China is in a…

The Chinese government attempting to pick winners is the best hope the chip embargo has; Xi Jinping is ironically the person best placed to cause it to succeed. The issue is that a Manhattan projet styled effort followed up by turning technology over to private industry is something that China could very well do and would probably be effective.

Let alone the silly idea of challenging multiple countries simultaneously as was proposed at the thread root. China tried that with rare earths and failed about as quickly as could be expected; as I recall they lost a quarter of the market in short order and backed off.

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wouldn't have to put all their fabs here. But if they want the latest ASML machines they need to have at least one big fab inside the EU, or else they only get one generation back. There's only a handful of companies in the world producing chips at scale, so it wouldn't be too out of the question. You could even invite the Chinese to put their fabs in the EU so that they get a chip sector they control but also m…

Isn't it better (though harder) to have a good environment for building things than to just write protectionist rules?

You write as if that had ever been tried. Everybody has protectionist rules. Some have a little less of them than others and they make a big show of it, but acting as if that show was equivalent to absence of protectionism is like celebrating self-imposed ignorance.

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#206
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they really want to, they can just limit the export of ASML machines only to companies that have a fab here in the EU. US gets really unhappy and makes Taiwan ban exports of TSMC chips and products containing TSMC chips to EU. Oops. EU would've to onshore the whole supply chain first. Probably a 100B-1T€, 10-30y endavour. Good luck with that.

Does not work like that, EU has big stake in the EUV-tech. I see no problem in forcing ASML to build a fab in Europe.

Why would ASML build a fab?

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is finished, behind the propaganda poster, have some pity and compassion.

I don't think China is doing as well as many Chinese might believe but this doom of China is predicted every other year. Chinese companies are making strides in battery tech ( CATL ) and robotics ( DJI, Siasun )

demography is their doom

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#208
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is finished, behind the propaganda poster, have some pity and compassion.

Why is China finished? They have manufacturing, talent, and a large internal market - and whatever financial problems they might be facing are rather virtual.

and no babies so demography is going to hit them really, really hard

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what cost? An environment with slave labor would be great if you wanted to have things produced for cheap. Should we allow slave labor to stay competitive? This is a pretty extreme example, but that's what it comes down to. Thanks to the free market, there's always going to be someone willing to do it for cheaper while sacrificing product quality, employee welfare, or environmental impact.

> At what cost? At the cost of seeing people take advantage of the opportunity to add value for their customers. > This is a pretty extreme example, but that's what it comes down to It's not what it comes down to. Someone in the market for the cheapest smartphone possible won't buy a $10 phone even though it's cheaper than the next alternative, because quality also matters. Or at least, value for money matters. > Tha…

People thought the iPhone was good value for money even though there were widespread reports of workers killing themselves by jumping out of factory windows due to horrible working conditions. I'm not singling them out, just providing a point of reference. [1]

> If it's too expensive to create employers, there's no competition for workers.

Employees working in a manufacturing facilities in e.g. China and Europe aren't competing for the same jobs. There's one set of standards for employees there, and there's another set of standards for employees here.

We can't compete with that because we've decided that workers shouldn't be driven to suicide while they don't always share the same reservations and deem waivers, "safety netting", company-provided help hotlines, prayer sessions and "no-suicide pledges", to be an acceptable solution to the problem. [1]

What can we do other than add protectionist rules?

> Only regulations can solve this.

Agreed. And if EU enforces such regulations while China doesn't, for example, we need protectionist rules in place to ensure that they can't undercut us by killing our planet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides

Re: EU chip goal 'unrealistic' says ASML CEO

#210
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they really want to, they can just limit the export of ASML machines only to companies that have a fab here in the EU. US gets really unhappy and makes Taiwan ban exports of TSMC chips and products containing TSMC chips to EU. Oops. EU would've to onshore the whole supply chain first. Probably a 100B-1T€, 10-30y endavour. Good luck with that.

Does not work like that, EU has big stake in the EUV-tech. I see no problem in forcing ASML to build a fab in Europe.

ASML makes lithography machines, they don't actually fab chips themselves.
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