I’m not sure what the downsides are here…
From a competition standpoint it’d be best if ASML wasn’t a monopoly. Ideally though the competition would come from a state that is genuinely democratic, at least not authoritarian. Interesting to consider in the context of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_War:_The_Fight_for_the_World’s_Most_Critical_Technology but yes it’s obviously both an economical and political challenge.
Overall if democracies try to use this monopoly as a political tool and yet they don’t themselves have enough capability to allocate the output from the sanctions then it can only be a short term solution, otherwise they risk hurting such a powerful bottleneck.
PS: I have ASML stocks so economically speaking I’d prefer if sanctions wouldn’t hurt their bottom line. Yet, if their sales comes from actors that are belligerent to other nations, e.g Taiwan for the 1 China program resulting in its “silicon shield”, then I’m fine with a loss. ASML has as a corporation to maximize its return on investment but… somehow being ignorant of the geopolitical risk is simply not responsible.
BTW I can’t imagine China being self-sufficient on high-end chip production. They’d have first to catch-up to TSMC then to ASML. I’m not saying it’s theoretically impossible but the little I did learn about R&D in China is how heavily it relies on the CCP and how poorly information flows there, which I believe in such a sector where logistics and research is so complex, I don’t believe can realistically be achieved, even while literally printing money to fund it.
