Do you remember the speed with which Chinese phones went from absolute crap to legitimate flagships? Their automobiles? From having no AI as to speak of to Deepseek? China advancing at breakneck speed when they really want is something to be worried about if you want to be technologically ahead of them.
EUV was an international effort by multiple (of the richest) countries specializing in different areas. There is no one country that does it all. When someone says China can do it, it's tantamount to saying China can outcompete the world. Maybe they can, but its not going to be an easy effort.
The International Space Station was an international effort by multiple (of the richest) countries specializing in different areas. There is no one country that does it all.
You would think people like HN User corimaith would have learned from the ISS fiasco.
I've gotten to the point where I no longer even listen to people who underestimate the Chinese. Whatever points they're making can be safely ignored. Indeed, strategic sense demands we ignore them. The time for underestimating the Chinese is long past. That's not the reality we live in any longer.
On the contrary, the use of sanctions precisely recognizes the Chinese ability to innovate and the need to not give them our technology on a silver plate while they are it. Tens, if not hundreds of billions are already being funded into the chip industry's r&d and bringing manufacturing back home.
"Against the power of Mordor there can be no victory. We must join with him, Gandalf. We must join with Sauron. It would be wise, my friend."
I've seen this argument before with some pro-China voices and it's the same circular reasoning in arguments like Roko's Basilisk. It is is futile and unwise to oppose China's ascent at the risk of incurring their future wrath when said rise is inveitable, better that we pledge loyalty now for future favours". It's nothing more than intimidation.
The difference is that future of China's hegemony is far from inevitable. They are strong, but they're not stronger just yet. Their innovation hasn't really broken through in red oceans when paired against competive incumbents, and they are just as prone to hype bubbles as we are. And their massive investment is coming at the cost of a resulting maligned consumption balance and destructive price wars. So there still moves to be made that can radically alter the trajectory of events.
Which argument is right really depends on a realistic evaluation of the situation.
To me I just have a bad gut feeling when we (the west) force China to oppose us.
I also had a bad gut feeling when we outsourced our technology there. We let the buy our companies while China only allowed joint ventures with state controlled companies.
Why didn't we pick up the fight 10 years earlier if they are so evil that we cannot let them win?
It's not, at all. The EUV light source itself comes from an American company, for instance. The mirrors come from Zeiss. ASML integrate the parts into a system.
If you want the anti-EU points on that subject; the EU once (the 90s) represented around 40% of the world's semiconductor fabrication. Then the Asians decided that was a bit silly and the situation should be rationalised.
Things like ASML are the tattered remnants of the EU being a powerful force in this market. China might not be able to replicate ASML, we'll see. But if the EU can compete meaningfully with the Asians at semiconductor manufacturing that'd be a shocking development.
I have a different interpretation of this. As our economy and expertise grows, we move further and further into foundational parts of the stack while leaving the implementation details to less developed countries.
All modern semiconductors need ASML machines.
All modern AI is based on research by Sepp Hochreitner.
The www is based on work done by CERN.
Most factories are run on Siemens automation systems.
We've moved on from lower-level concerns like building chips to a higher level, directionally controlling the way economies and societies develop.
It only fails if you see economic growth as the metric to optimize for, which I would argue is another symptom of societies still focused on those lower levels of the stack.
Economic growth is an enabling factor for a higher level metric, quality of live. It succeeds spectacularly there.
EU countries have enough money to either pay for overly generous social services or defense, not for both. A stronger economy would have been enough to pay for both.
That would suggest either basic Keynsianism or your understanding of it is wrong. Resources directed towards the military (with the exception of research) represent almost pure waste from an economic perspective.
You've got a bunch of poor people starving and set up a factory to produce a couple of bombs and pull some farmers off the land to have them march up and down the parade grounds. That isn't going to put more food on the table. Sure it might be a good idea regardless because being invaded sucks, but it isn't wealth creation without a very creative understanding of wealth. A society can't be better off without creating new wealth.
How do you figure that? This is literally telling some of the people who would be growing the economy to stop doing that and focus on making military goods instead. That can't be done and also have a stronger economy. The resources for the army have to come from somewhere - they're resources being directed away from strengthening the economy towards strengthening the army.
I suppose there could be some sort of plowshares-to-swords program where they build tractors and bulldozers that can be repurposed into military gear on short notice. But I havn't heard of that working anywhere before and my read of modern militarys is that the gear gets pretty specialised to military use. And the soldiers need to actually focus on soldiering rather than being part timers.
At some level a country needs an army because without one they don't get to have an economy, but it is a dead weight in terms of prosperity. Military expenditure comes directly out of what people would otherwise use to improve their own lifestyles.
Calling TSMC "implementation details" is delusional.
If the only thing you needed to make cutting edge chips were some machines from ASML every country in the world would be making their own chips right now.
