At the moment I don't think ASML has to worry but U.S. policymakers should be dusting off their contingency plans. They have contingency plans, right? I think they're in the same drawer as the CDC's pandemic response folder.
From Nikkei Asia, April 11:
China tech company spending billions, snapping up talent in battle against U.S. crackdown
Huawei Technologies is building a massive semiconductor equipment research and development center in Shanghai as the Chinese tech titan continues to beef up its chip supply chain to counter a U.S. crackdown.
The center's mission includes building lithography machines, vital equipment for producing cutting-edge chips. Washington's export controls have sharply reduced Huawei's access to this equipment, whose production is dominated by just three companies: ASML of the Netherlands and Japan's Nikon and Canon.
To staff the new center, Huawei is offering salary packages worth up to twice as much as local chipmakers, industry executives and sources briefed on the matter told Nikkei Asia. The company has already hired numerous engineers who have worked with top global chip tool builders like Applied Materials, Lam Research, KLA and ASML, they said, adding that chip industry veterans with more than 15 years of experience at leading chipmakers like TSMC, Intel and Micron are also among recent and potential hires.
Washington's tighter export controls over the past few years have also impacted the job market in China, including by making it more difficult for Chinese citizens to work for foreign chip companies in the country. This has left more top chip talent available for Huawei and other local companies to choose from.
But while Huawei's compensation package is generous, its working culture can be challenging, according to chip industry managers.
"Working with them is brutal. It's not 996 -- meaning working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. ... It will literally be 007 -- from midnight to midnight, seven days a week. No days off at all," one Chinese chip engineer told Nikkei Asia. "The contract will be for three years, [but] the majority of people can't survive till renewal."
Semiconductor equipment, like chips themselves, have been caught in the crosshairs of U.S. export controls. Washington has lobbied allies Japan and the Netherlands to implement similar restrictions on the export of advanced chip tools to limit China's access to them.
These restrictions have spurred many Chinese chipmakers to seek domestic alternatives wherever possible. Naura, China's leading supplier of semiconductor equipment, has seen its revenue more than quadruple since 2018 and is expected to report another record year in 2023.
Huawei, too, has responded to the U.S. crackdown by aggressively beefing up its domestic capabilities....
....MUCH MORE
