"The aim is for China to eventually be able to make advanced chips on machines that are entirely China-made. China wants the United States 100% kicked out of its supply chains." — An individual who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity […] Scientists in a top-secret Chinese facility "have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent," With the help of engineers recruited from ASML […] Chinese scientists reportedly "reverse engineered" the firm's extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, or EUVs.

The Manhattan Project was seen as true race to something novel that introduced a (disruptive) inflection point, presented a clear liminal state towards new Nash Equilibria. This now is a feat, but far from the referenced tale: Nobody will “win” a “war” over it.

“Specialized equipment used to manufacture the semiconductor chips for weapons of war, smartphones, and, crucially, AI technology” is not needed for the latter, and indeed smaller node sizes are used in most of it. 5nm or whatever they are supposedly at is not crucial for “AI technology.”

The narrative that’s sprinkled it, engineers for ASML were the saviours, sounds depressoid and belittling of the competence other enterprises and nations can muster. Same with “the U.S. has long leveraged China's chip-making constraints to maintain technological dominance”—maybe China had to outsource chip production, but it’s a building-block down in the stack. Huawei, DJI, and others show the U.S. is struggling to remain competitive.