Even as one of China’s disgraceful foreign ministers, Wang Yi, called the new Taiwanese president “disgraceful,” turning up the heat on William Lai Ching-te just a day after he took office, Bloomberg confirmed that makers of high-end chips ASML and TSMC “Can Disable Chip Machines If China Invades Taiwan” (May 21, 2024). This can be done remotely.
ASML, formerly Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography, is a Dutch multinational corporation that gives “the world’s leading chipmakers the power to mass produce patterns on silicon.”
TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, creates chips used in “high performance computing, smartphones, the Internet of Things, automotive, and digital consumer electronics.”
Extreme ultraviolet
Bloomberg says: “The remote shut-off applies to Netherlands-based ASML’s line of extreme ultraviolet machines, known within the industry as EUVs, for which TSMC is its single biggest client. EUVs harness high-frequency light waves to print the smallest microchip transistors in existence—creating chips that have artificial-intelligence uses as well as more sensitive military applications….
“About the size of a city bus, an EUV requires regular servicing and updates. As part of that, the company can remotely force a shut-off which would act as a kill switch…. The Veldhoven-based company is the world’s only manufacturer of these machines, which sell for more than €200 million ($217 million) apiece.”
One question is whether the machine stoppage would last very long if the People’s Republic of China successfully invades the Republic of China. Would technicians doing the invaders’ dirty work be able to nondestructively circumvent the remote-contol shut-off?
Assuming that the answer is no, another question is whether ASML’s ability to impede much of the productive capacity of one of Taiwan’s top industries, one that dominates the global market for high-end chips, will help deter China from invading.
Pillar of shame
China is not currently invading Taiwan. So, so far, China has been deterred for whatever reasons, probably not excluding Taiwan’s military resources and preparations. But the Chinese government also makes a point of always telling the world that it is undeterred, that “peaceful” or coercive “reunion” is coming and inevitable, and that all gainsayers are, in the latest formulation, destined for “the pillar of shame of history.”
Foreign Minister Wang is unimpressed by the President Lai’s call to “stop intimidating Taiwan verbally and militarily, and, together with Taiwan, to shoulder our responsibility to [etc.]” In turgid response, Wang says: “The ugly acts of Lai Ching-te and others who betray the nation and their ancestors is [sic] disgraceful. All Taiwan independence separatists will be nailed to the pillar of shame in history.” Something we often see in bad-guy propaganda: projection.
