China's Chip Breakthrough Demands an American Response
Earlier this week, a click-bait-y title caught my eye. The article, China’s Semiconductor Breakthrough , detailed the People’s Republic of China’s recent innovations in advanced semiconductor manufacturing.[ 1 ] Until now, the world’s highest-quality chips—which are essential to accomplish demanding tasks such as cloud computing, machine learning, and 5G—have been produced outside of the PRC. This is deliberate: the United States has attempted to hamstring China’s advanced semiconductor industry by blocking Chinese entities from purchasing essential manufacturing equipment. Only one company in the world—a Dutch company called ASML—produces the advanced Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV) machines necessary to manufacture top-of-the-line semiconductors, and the United States has lobbied Dutch officials heavily to ban their sale and export to China.[ 2 ] China has therefore been keen to develop its own chip-production methods and has landed on an alternative: Deep Ultra...