Free Republic

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has told ASML that Washington is concerned that one of its top chipmaking machines may have found its way to China in violation of U.S.-led export restrictions, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday. Lutnick expressed the concerns over ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV machines, to senior leaders of the Dutch firm in a series of meetings, the report. ASML's most advanced EUV systems are roughly the size of a school bus and weigh 180 tons. The U.S. Commerce Department and the White House were not immediately available for comment outside business hours when contacted by...

The great computer chip shortage of 2021 will likely get worse before it gets better. This conclusion was reached following brief study and anecdotal review. Moreover, while COVID lockdowns may have initially triggered the shortage, several decades of shortsighted decisions and simmering geopolitical tensions make it much more than a matter of fixing a few broken links in the supply chain. Here’s why… The world’s top two leading chip companies are Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics. These two Asian firms, combined, control more than 70 percent of the semiconductor manufacturing market. The U.S., which was once a leader,...