Foreign Affairs was also managed and ran by a former Clinton loyalist back in the 1970's by the deceased bulldog of a diplomat, Richard Holbrooke.
@BoraTas allow me to welcome you with open arms , I had read one of your post from Pakistan Defense Forum and I'm extremely happy that you decided to join this forum, please post more and add to the discussion, I really appreciate that in this forum we had esteemed members like @WTAN @foofy @Oldschool @Skywatcher @superdog and others who had background in the semiconductor sector and with you in the mix, it will be an enjoyable and enlightening experience. Allow me to repost it again.
From Ollie Ranta (Pakistan defense forum)
Sometimes you find interesting text in surprising places: From
Bora Taş on January 30 2021
Lives in The Netherlands Computer scientist/chip designer.
"United States is pressuring the Netherlands to block the sale of EUV equipment to SMIC by Dutch company ASML is ultimately affecting China's dream in technology". How long US can resist China's development?
I think I am the perfect person to answer this. I have been working in the semiconductor industry for years, currently living in the Netherlands, lived and worked in China for 3 years, I know a lot of engineers from ASML (expecially after they hired hundreds of Turkish engineers). Let me tell you something: High-end semiconductor manufacturing is black magic. Both the processes and tools used for it are very complex. ASML’s EUV lithography machine is probably the most complex tool humankind ever developed since it stopped jumping between trees. It took billions of Euros and decades of experience to perfect it. Other experienced lithography machine suppliers failed at it. China has no experience in high-end semiconductor manufacturing tools with the exception of one-off/few-off prototypes.
ASML’s EUV lithography machine. Needs 41 semi-trucks to get transported, costs $150 million, has 100.000 major parts, has mirrors that need months of grinding to reach needed smoothness, needs multiple people with PhD’s as machine operators. Quite high-tech. Isn’t it?
Unfortunately, ASML is a very convenient target for the USA. The company uses a lot of critical parts from the USA but those parts don’t represent anything significant in the US economy in terms of their monetary value. Chinese electronics industry still depends on foreign chips so it can not threaten fabs with banning the sale of chips in China that were manufactured using ASML tools. Also, China isn’t a big customer of ASML too.
Is China hopeless? No.
1- All of those tools are engineered and made by humans, and the laws of physics are the same both in the Netherlands and China. If the Netherlands could, then there is no reason for anybody else to fail with the correct approach.
2- China is filthy rich compared to the Netherlands. Chinese economy is 17x of the Netherlands’, 9x of SK’s, 27x of Taiwan’s, 3+x of Japan’s. With state support, Chinese fabs and tool makers can hire the top people from the rest of the world with salaries ASML, LamResearch, AM, Synopsys, TSMC, Samsung, … simply can not compete with. A significant portion of these companies’ employees are expats anyway, most of them are just after money. In fact China is already doing this successfully with good results. For example, it already has a working EUV lithography machine prototype, already caught up with the rest in chip testing, packaging, wafer production, also its first immersion lithography machine (good enough for most things) is getting prepared for commercial use.
3- China is a scientific powerhouse on its own. It is the country with most patent applications, most research output, graduates more STEM students than any other country, 2nd largest R&D spender, has 11 universities in top 100. This leads us to my first point. If the Netherlands could, so can China if given enough time.
4- Catching up is much easier than innovating. Knowing something is possible and having a general knowledge of how it works make things much easier.
5- Time is on the Chinese side. Technology of semiconductors is close to maturity/stalling (choose the word depending on your view). If the development slows (which it does) it gives China the opportunity to catch-up. If a tech revolution happens, then the playing field evens out anyway.
6- You don’t need EUV for the most things. You don’t even need high-end processes for the most things. There is more to semiconductors than the latest smartphone processors, GPUs, and CPUs. Look at iPhone 12 teardown videos. You will see a lot of chips. Only one of them needs EUV. An average modern car has 250+ computers inside. That means thousands of chips. All of them are manufactured using old processes. This is even more true for military and space applications. Those use very old chips that are known to be reliable and secure.
Conclusion: Blocking ASML from selling EUV machines to China can hurt Chinese businesses for some time but in the grand scheme it is insignificant. The USA needs to run faster rather than keep trying to block China if it wants to preserve its dominance in tech.
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Given semiconductors are approaching the physical limits of 1nm, Moore's law is slowing dramatically which favors players catching-up.
Not if the nations end in deep economic trouble and the USA cannot provide for either nation when they are in the middle of an economic collapse and a sovereign debt crisis. This plan would have been useful a while back but with the USA having a chip shortage right now along with everything else, this strikes a pure stupidity right now since they cannot ramp up there manufacturing to counter this shortage in the short term which is obviously going to screw there economy further in the long run since they have to get there rare earths processing to be able to counter this situation which if China eventually puts a stop on this process, has the potential to screw all of the countries involved, hence why Biden doesn’t seem to want to stir up the pot too much since he knows that China has only started there counterattack and any real action will mean at best both China and the USA will destroy each other and at worse, the USA gets screwed so bad that other nations will be invited for some long overdue payback
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This is not something strategic. This is purely economic brinkmanship to decrease the competitiveness of Chinese products. At any slightest attempt, China should impose US-style sanctions on American, Japanese and South Korean companies. It is a fool's game to go after 100% self-sufficiency in this era. Free trade is a much better option. If they don't want to trade freely, then give them what they want. For example, ban all corporations doing any type of business with Samsung from operating in China and doing business with Chinese companies. Impose 100% tariffs on Japanese cars. Put 100% tariff on all American made consumer electronics, and commercial electronics with non-American alternatives.
China can focus one one country, say Japan, and ban rare earth export to Japan while limiting supply to US and Korea. Focus on making Japan suffer the most to the benefit of the others. Once Japan see that their folly, Japan will hopefully capitulate and then repeat the process on Korea, etc. Divide and overcome.
Ugggggggh
This isn't going to work out well for anyone. I can't imagine any approach that goes "Let's slow the development of technology" is a good idea.
white anglos don't think like us; the covid situation has proven they're ok with killing their own people if they can stay on top. In that respect they're no different to suicide bombers.
These are the same people who endorse murdering and assassinating scientists of rival nations after all.