How’s the US-China tech war going? Ask AI

AN UNMISTAKEABLE shots-fired moment in the US-China tech war arrived in early 2024 – via the Netherlands.

“We do not expect to get export licences for our most advanced immersion systems – the NXT:2000 and up – for China in 2024,” executives at ASML, the Dutch lithography giant at the heart of the global semiconductor supply chain, said on their earnings call in January that year, warning that the curbs, a result of years of US pressure, would knock 10 to 15 per cent off the company’s core China equipment sales.

For global investors, this was Washington flexing its hegemonic muscle to delay a key rival’s race to the frontier of artificial intelligence, just as it was becoming the defining general-purpose technology of our era.