Eindhoven, Netherlands — ASML headquarters, morning
The ASML building did not look like the seat of a power monopoly. Glass, steel, modern architecture — it could have been the headquarters of any technology company. But behind these walls, machines were being built that were the key to the functioning of the modern world.
EUV lithography — extreme ultraviolet lithography. Machines that used extremely short wavelengths of light to create chips with features smaller than an atom. A single machine weighed one hundred and thirty tonnes, contained one hundred thousand components from five thousand suppliers around the world — mostly European — and cost two hundred million euros.
And only one company in the world made them.
ASML.
Peter van den Berg, the Technical Director, was an engineer, not a politician. He had studied physics in Delft, spent twenty years perfecting EUV technology at a time when most competitors considered it unachievable. And now, with every chip below seven nanometres in the world existing thanks to his machines, people had come to see him who were not interested in chips.
They were interested in something else.
"I understand the technology,"
said the Dutch Minister of Defence, who did not normally sit in the offices of technology directors.
"We want to know about the service contract."
"The service contract?"
"Every EUV machine you have sold — in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan — requires regular servicing and software updates from the Netherlands. Without these updates, the machine eventually stops functioning. Is that correct?"
Van den Berg looked at him for a long moment.
"Technically, yes. EUV is an extremely complex technology. The optics must be calibrated. The software is updated. Without support from our side…"
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"How long before the machines stop functioning?"
Van den Berg knew where the question was heading. He answered slowly, because every word carried weight.
"Most machines have a twelve- to eighteen-month critical maintenance cycle. Without it, precision degrades. After a year without servicing, a machine is incapable of producing chips below five nanometres. After two years — not below ten."
"And without chips below ten nanometres?"
"Without chips below ten nanometres, modern processors don't work. Smartphones don't work. Servers don't work. Military systems, missile guidance computers, artificial intelligence."
The minister nodded.
"Thank you, Mr van den Berg. That was all we needed to know."
Van den Berg was left alone in his office, thinking. He knew what had just happened. The Netherlands — a country of eighteen million people, remarkable among European nations chiefly for its ingenuity — had just discovered that it held in its hands a lever no one had previously recognised.
ASML was not merely a company. It was an instrument of geopolitics.
* * *
Beijing, Ministry of Science and Technology — the same time
Minister Zhao Wei read the report from Brussels with an expression his assistant would later describe as "ice in summer." Zhao had spent twenty years observing European technology policy and had always reached the same conclusion: Europe is wealthy but slow, fragmented and incapable of decisive action.
Today he was not certain.
"SMIC has an eighteen-month supply of spare parts,"
his deputy was saying.
"After that…"
"After that we start falling behind,"
Zhao finished.
"I know. And by then, do we have an alternative?"
"We're investing fifty billion in our own EUV programme. But our experts estimate a minimum of eight years to reach a comparable level. Perhaps ten."
Zhao stood and walked to the window overlooking Beijing. Six million cars, twenty million people, an economy that depended on chips the way it depended on air.
Eight years. Perhaps ten. And Europe in that time will be two generations of technology ahead.
For the first time in a long while, he felt something he was not accustomed to feeling.
Respect.
