US wants to revoke China’s access to older chip manufacturing technology

The US government is exerting massive pressure on the Netherlands to ensure that key suppliers in the chip industry no longer supply machines to China. The US wants to prevent China from making further progress in chip production.

Like the US Economic Department Bloomberg According to reports, several American politicians are currently trying to ensure that the Netherlands prevents further sales of chip production technology by world market leader ASML from the Netherlands. In concrete terms, this concerns so-called DUV systems or deep ultraviolet lithography systems.

The latest generation of machines has already been banned and now older systems will follow

The lithography systems are used to provide the silicon wafers with microscopic structures. The systems in question, which ASML should no longer supply to China, are systems that are no longer state-of-the-art but are still widely used for less complex chips.

If the efforts of American politicians to influence the Netherlands bear fruit, it will be much more difficult for Chinese chip manufacturers to further expand their capabilities to build more modern chips. ASML would probably lose only about five to ten percent of its sales because the company has so far mainly done business with other chip manufacturers that are not from China. For SMIC, the largest Chinese chip maker, and other similar companies from China, the situation is likely to deteriorate significantly.

The Dutch authorities are already preventing ASML from selling its state-of-the-art Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography lithography systems to China by not granting the company the appropriate licenses. The Chinese government has reacted with extreme sniggering to reports of the US crackdown on exports of previous generation manufacturing technology. A State Department spokesman accused the US of “technological terrorism,” an attempt to impose a blockade and politicize, weaponize and ideologically tax economic issues in order to put its agenda into action.