Exclusive: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips
Shenzhen team completed a working prototype of a EUV machine in early 2025, sources say
The lithography machine, built by former ASML engineers, fills a factory floor, sources say
China's EUV machine is undergoing testing, and has not produced working chips, sources say
Government is targeting 2028 for working chips, but sources say 2030 is more likely
Western semiconductor security strategy rested on two pillars. The “silicon shield” thesis: Taiwan’s dominance in advanced chip manufacturing makes invasion counterproductive. And export controls: block ASML from selling EUV systems to China, problem contained.
Both pillars shared a hidden assumption. That knowledge lives in machines, not people.
ASML’s EUV systems contain over 100,000 components. The mirrors must be accurate to 50 picometers — roughly the width of an atom. The plasma source fires 50,000 tin droplets per second, each vaporized by a 30-kilowatt laser. This complexity was supposed to be the moat.
But every specification exists because humans figured it out. The machine is crystallized knowledge. The humans are the source.