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Designing such an advanced lithography machine is probably a Manhattan Project scale task. China is indeed trying to make progress and they will probably get there someday but for now ASML is the only company in the world that knows how to build these or anything remotely close.




ASML is not the only sole supplier involved. There's a few more layers of them you have to replace.

Right, the most famous example is Zeiss which is the only company in the world that builds the high-precision mirrors needed for the most advanced ASML machines. I’m not sure if those are subject to export bans too, but even if they are, I think China could eventually figure out how to build them. It’s just a matter of a huge amount of R&D that would need to be done first.



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