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...
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..
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
All this will do is encourage development of indigenous technology. Unlike, let's say IBM360/USSR situation.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_Soviet_Union" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_So...</a>