Transcription
Bloomberg understands that The US is concerned that China may have got hand its hands on one of the top making machines made by Dutch giant ASML. ASML says they've never shipped an EUV chip machine to China. So let's get some analysis from Bloomberg senior market strategist Neil Campling.
Neil, just bring us some more details on this scoop. How big a challenge is it for ASML? It's certainly a challenge in The trying to understand exactly what's happened because ASML has said that they haven't shipped any any of the machines out to China. So if we if we think ASML has actually had export restrictions to China for their leading technologies since way back since 2019. So it's it's happened for a long time.
Now if it were true that China got ahold of a ahold of machine, now it would obviously undermine Western export controls. And and maybe in terms of, the bigger picture, this is about, you know, the risks of shifting the global balance of of AI. And, I think The US will be concerned about the threat to the market dominance of the of the Western, if you like, the The US tech giants.
So it's very difficult for China to have the most advanced chips, the most advanced microprocessors that they need for the AI, tool set. So to produce frontier AI, systems, you need the leading edge technology, and ASML really has a monopoly on that. So, so this this this, this situation, clearly is a concern to the US government if it's if it's true. But it's it's it's unlikely that, obviously, the ASMR has has shipped any of the equipment there. But, of course, there is a lot of equipment that's that's sitting next door to China in terms of Taiwan, given that, TSMC is, is the dominant, player in leading, chip technology.
Yeah. You kinda wonder what the ideal situation for the Trump administration would be in this situation. Yeah. I mean, this is I think this is why, again, like, stories yesterday around The US sort of progressing on on the collaboration of Intel producing more chips at at home in The US. The the the key thing for The US is to stay ahead of the Chinese tech development to for for the leadership of that position.
In terms of supply chains, dominance around leading edge chips is still very much for TSMC and Samsung. And all the reports suggest that China is still some like, five years away from from catching up. And, of course, those companies are not standing still. They're continuing to to advance their technologies. So it's difficult to see how how China would catch up even with the technology if they did have or alternative, systems in place.
But, yet, certainly, those many stories about domestic Chinese technology trying to accelerate their own their own systems, but it's difficult to see how they can do it without these really complex tools, which really is is a is a complete monopoly, of the technology.