The Chinese government may be much closer to achieving independence from Western chip-etching capability than observers had suspected.
Reuters says that a prototype of a lithographic machine which can produce “the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence, smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance” was completed early this year in a Shenzhen laboratory and is now being tested (December 17, 2025).
Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography “use beams of extreme ultraviolet light to etch circuits thousands of times thinner than a human hair onto silicon wafers, currently a capability monopolized by the West. The smaller the circuits, the more powerful the chips.”
The Chinese government wants to get its machine fully up and running and making viable chips by 2028, but the informants say that getting this done by 2030 is more likely.
“It makes sense that companies would want to replicate our technology, but doing so is no small feat,” the Dutch mega-firm ASML, so far the only company that “has mastered EUV technology,” told Reuters. ASML produced its first working prototype in 2001 and “took nearly two decades and billions of euros in R&D spending before it produced its first commercially available chips in 2019.”
ASML’s renegades
If China succeeds, former ASML engineers will be to blame. The Shenzhen prototype was possible because they reverse-engineered ASML’s EUV machines, “according to two people with knowledge of the project.” Getting ASML machine parts was no problem, since these are available on secondary markets.
The engineers had one job, in the Netherlands, then another job, in the People’s Republic of China; all the same to them, maybe.
Most or all of these former ASML engineers were born in China.
One veteran Chinese engineer from ASML recruited to the project was surprised to find that his generous signing bonus came with an identification card issued under a false name, according to one of the people, who was familiar with his recruitment.
Once inside, he recognized other former ASML colleagues who were also working under aliases and was instructed to use their fake names at work to maintain secrecy, the person said. Another person independently confirmed that recruits were given fake IDs to conceal their identities from other workers inside the secure facility.
The guidance was clear, the two people said: Classified under national security, no one outside the compound could know what they were building—or that they were there at all.
The team includes recently retired, Chinese-born former ASML engineers and scientists—prime recruitment targets because they possess sensitive technical knowledge but face fewer professional constraints after leaving the company, the people said.
Two current ASML employees of Chinese nationality in the Netherlands told Reuters they have been approached by recruiters from Huawei since at least 2020.
The persons who gave Reuters the scoop are, obviously, in danger now despite whatever steps they may have taken to protect themselves.
ASML has sold EUV systems to countries friendly to the U.S. but not thus far to China, in part perhaps because of U.S. pressure and export controls.
The barn door may be getting a new lock. The Dutch Ministry of Defense says that the Netherlands “is developing policies requiring ‘knowledge institutions’ to perform personnel screenings to prevent access to sensitive technology ‘by individuals that have ill intentions or who are at risk of being pressured.’ ”
