US Pressed Dutch Gov over ASML Sale

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asml-holding-usa-china-insight/trump-administration-pressed-dutch-hard-to-cancel-china-chip-equipment-sale-sources-idUSKBN1Z50HN

by HaGoijer • 7 years ago

97 61 7 years ago

reuters.com

java-man• 7 years ago

All this will do is encourage development of indigenous technology. Unlike, let's say IBM360/USSR situation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_So...

secondo• 7 years ago

As a European I feel increasingly concerned about the influence of US in our recent trading decisions. The sense of an alliance feels somewhat imbalanced to say the least. Interestingly whereas we have an advanced hardware industry we’re so far behind on leading software solutions that I doubt there will be any change to this balance any time soon. I guess software is eating the world...

yorwba2• 7 years ago

That hardware usually ships with software provided by the manufacturer, so I'm not sure Europe really is behind on "leading software solutions". Software that isn't aimed at mass-market user-facing applications is still software.

tinus_hn• 7 years ago

It’s not like this is new, except with this government subtle diplomacy has been replaced with loud buffoonery, which makes this kind of manipulation slightly more obvious.

IfOnlyYouKnew• 7 years ago

The is quite obviously an increase not just in buffoonery, but the basic, mercantilistic strategy. That's why this adminstration is bailing out to the tune of four times what the financial crisis cost, year. And farmers even get to keep that money.

sremani2• 7 years ago

American Security guarantees do not come for free. Feeling constrained? then raise an Army and a Navy worth fielding and fighting Russians with out American assistance.

the-dude• 7 years ago

Why would we fight the Russians?

cies3• 7 years ago

Or create a new NATO that does not repeatedly exclude the Russians[1]. And could also hold a rule not to invade other countries (yes looking at you US).

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/fact-russia-pitch...

NicoJuicy8• 7 years ago

Europe easily outspends Russia in military investments. 287$ billion for Europe, 70$ for Russia in 2015 ( russia vs europe military spend: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=russia+vs+europe+milit... )

So, I don't know where your opinion comes from. But I think you could be better informed ;)

Ps. I do think we should buy less US and spend more European. Eg. The F-35 is a joke currently, considering the costs.

est315• 7 years ago

TBH I'm glad it's not sold off. Europe has barely any large world leading companies in the digital sector. ASML is one of those world leaders.

As for your american influence point, I'd certainly prefer if a strong EU council would block the sale instead of our transatlantic partners, but EU council can't even prevent OBOR in central europe...

joshuaissac• 7 years ago

How does preventing ASML from selling products to Chinese customers help it stay a world leader? A strong EU council would not block such sales.

yorwba2• 7 years ago

The article is not about ASML getting sold, but about ASML selling (or rather, not selling) their product to customers in China.

baybal27• 7 years ago

I don't think that US even hides the fact that they made Wassenaar in order to keep their allies in line, and clip their wings on the techno-economic front.

For example, when US was enthusiastic selling military equipment to China, not a single US company was ever denied a license, at the same time, US made everything to deny that for its allies.

cdiddy2• 7 years ago

It feels like the US and China are in an undeclared cold war and the US is trying to draw lines to see who is on which side. If you resist using Huawei for example you are more likely on the US side of the fence.

Europe hasn't reached the same level of awareness(paranoia?) that the US has yet.

meddlepal• 7 years ago

Maybe if Europe had a powerful military and wasn't dependent on the US for its defense then it could actually tell the US to go pound sand.

But that's expensive and instead you guys get to shovel your money into social programs knowing if push comes to shove we are gonna help out.

The situation in Europe is entirely self-created.

emn13• 7 years ago

This software imbalance is partially created by the fundamental inequalities contract+IP law creates. Since it grants not just remuneration for the creative, but also control, it's really, really easy to abuse economies of scale, and software is one big capitalist failure in that regard - it's not competitiive at all; one barrier to entry and network effect after the other.

And whereas we by now have e.g. laws that allow transferring (say) a telephone number from one provider to the next; we do not yet have similar protections for the digital equivalents. Want to transfer your facebook account - as in the live account, connections & address & all, not the old data - to a new provider? Good luck with that (frankly, even the data isn't transferable, because the export format isn't an commonly used standard). Want to replace your gmail account with something else? Or, to play on recent events - want to transfer your .org registration to some place not being defrauded by ICANN insiders? All of that's hopeless.

People sometimes claim there are technical difficulties here, but while those are real - they're not the cause for all this lock in. If the alternative to account transferability were bankruptcy, you can bet the big players would have this solved in about next to no time at all; but as it is - the incentives are to suppress competition and leverage the ill-gotten gains from being an early moving and having access to a large, single-language market.

This is also why I'm not so sure china's rise is actually a bad thing - even for the US. The US economy is essentially stagnant; there needs to be a shake-up rather than resting on laurels. IP law currently is less of an incentive to create, and more theft of the commons - the benefits to the private interests are completely out of whack with the costs imposed on society. A country that won't entirely bow to the absurdities of IP law might inspire others for entirely selfish reasons to follow suit - and that might eventually cause the IP oligopoly to crack, and inject more actual dynamism and creativity. Make no mistake, I'm not suggesting china is being nice or anything - it's just that if we're lucky the collateral damage may fall for once in a beneficial direction. Of course, we might not be so lucky, but hey...

If Europe really wants to compete, it should take a look around and adopt a similar less protective stance. France's tax is the wrong direction - instead of taxing the giants, we should break their market power, and prioritize things like flexibility to reassign a facebook account over the trademark holders right to keep the facebook name in house. Copyright should be restrained to FRAND principles, and e.g. not be a way to prevent a competitor from competing (i.e. the oracle vs google api fight) - and perhaps changed fundamentally to discourage rent-seeking where the value of a copyright lies to a significant extent in the network effect, not the actual content (which is pretty often the case, e.g. for shared cultural history like music too).

The deck is fundamentally and anti-competitively stacked; there' little chance of fighting via innovation when there's no way to compete even with innovations.

Obviously, anti-competitive tendencies are just as strong in Europe or China as they are in the US. But given the self-interest in breaking the US IP-backed rent-seekers, and the coinciding (and politically acknowledged) threat of democracy-undermining social bubbles there's a chance for a least some baby-steps towards change.

skissane• 7 years ago

Interestingly whereas we have an advanced hardware industry we’re so far behind on leading software solutions that I doubt there will be any change to this balance any time soon. I guess software is eating the world...

SAP?

xt00• 7 years ago

Something tells me that ASML will be the target of China hacking them and trying to get technical info on how to build their own machine. Hate to be pessimistic but I’ll be waiting for that news story to hit in a year or so..

dirtyid2• 7 years ago

A couple years ago, ASML silicon valley based Chinese employees (not all PRC nationals) sold EUV trade secrets to Chinese/Korean owned XTAL. But ASML CEO dismissed it as state level espionage and hinted the primary beneficiary was Samsung semiconductors. From what I heard ASML goes out of their way to prevent Samsung from reverse engineering their hardware.

But it's only a matter of time. ASML is tied to Wassenaar treaty at the end of the day. They're the perfect US pawns.

tooltalk2• 7 years ago

There appears to be some kind of smear campaign waged against Samsung by its foundry competitor TSMC at national level. Not sure about this insecurity or fake rivalry by Taiwanese tech companies who see Samsung as a major threat (https://phys.org/news/2013-04-taiwan-tech-industry-samsung.h...), but according to Reuters:

ASML rejects Samsung's involvement in IP theft case with rival, APRIL 17, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asml-holding-spying-samsu...

Samsung invested heavily in both companies XTAL and ASML (and owned at least 5% of the company at one point). Further, Samsung was never in semi-equipment/chemical business -- that's simply not their core competence.

deogeo2• 7 years ago

Already happened last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19703909

est315• 7 years ago

They are certainly at the cutting edge of semiconductor manufacturing. Given this bliss screen in a 2015 promo video and the general approach to security in the hardware sector, I doubt they are at the cutting edge of securing their own computers: https://youtu.be/ttbaaI5xUcg?t=254

baybal27• 7 years ago

Fab equipment running XP is still not as bad as few years old tools running Freedos

est315• 7 years ago

Wars will more and more be fought by remote controlled or autonomous drones. People are more ready to become soldiers if they can stay in a safe country, press some buttons, and their life won't be at stake. Wars will be less unpopular in the countries that deploy those drones. Even traditional forms of combat are increasingly supported by technology.

ASML is a key component here: they build the machines needed to build the chip components of drones. In future wars, having microchip fabs will be as important as having steel mills was in WW2. So ASML has huge strategic importance.

deogeo2• 7 years ago

You don't need to fight traditional wars if you can dominate economically. Which seems to be what China has been doing so far.

est315• 7 years ago

Economic sanctions are a powerful instrument but they are only as powerful as much as the people involved care about their economy. ISIS doesn't care about economics, they care about beheading non-muslims and creating a medieval society. Taliban could have gotten rich from accepting mining companies into their country but instead they chose to fly attacks on the USA and ruin their reputation. North Korea's economy is a shadow of the south Korean one yet they won't give in and stop their nuclear program in exchange for economic help. Managing these people requires application of immediate force, aka military.

Regarding China, it is building a monopoly in the hardware sector. It's already impossible to avoid China if you want to build a smartphone. The more this trend continues, the more China will exert influence with its power over that sector. For a military conflict with China, which isn't unlikely in the future, this means that anyone else would be at a disadvantage.

elfexec2• 7 years ago

History says otherwise. China and India dominated europe economically. That was one of the reasons for the european conquest of india and china.

China, Rus, Persia, Arabia, etc dominated the mongols economically. The mongols conquered them all.

The roman empire economically dominated the germanic north. The barbarians sacked and eventually conquered rome.

It's nice to have an economic edge, but it's also important to maintain a military edge.

Zigurd2• 7 years ago

Trying to keep technology from China is a qualitatively different problem from other technology sanctions. Russia, for example, has half the GDP of France. Denying a technology to Russia is effective because the relative price to Russia to work around technology restrictions is much higher. It costs them, measurably, visibly, in resources not applied to other pressing needs.

In the case of China, an import restriction amounts to an endorsement that replicating that technology is a higher priority for a country that, in general, is entering the first tier of technological powers. Picking fights with benefits that won't evaporate in a short time would be wise.

elfexec2• 7 years ago

Russia, for example, has half the GDP of France.

Only in nominal terms. Russia's economy is 50% larger in PPP terms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

We can argue about nominal vs PPP forever, but I think people should be aware of both.

Denying a technology to Russia is effective because the relative price to Russia to work around technology restrictions is much higher.

Sanctions for countries like Russia and China are more of a nuisance than anything. It just means they have to pay a little bit more to buy/steal/access the technology.

For example, China had to pay extra to get israel to give them military tech denied to them by the US.

https://www.military.com/defensetech/2013/12/24/report-israe...

Countries like Russia and China have money, technology or political favors ( both are permanent security council members with veto power ) that they can trade with our enemies or our allies to gain access to tech.

Of course the US is unsanctionable. The US is the only country in the world where if another country placed sanctions on the US, it would hurt them and not the US.

US Pressed Dutch Gov over ASML Sale

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