U.S. Journalist Exposes: ASML Once Proposed to Be Washington's Spies in China!

Recently, a new book titled "The Most Important Machine in the World" has caused a stir in the global semiconductor industry. The book, co-authored by former Bloomberg journalist Didier Bazy and Kagan Kirk, reveals a highly controversial accusation: the Dutch lithography equipment giant ASML once actively proposed a special cooperation plan to the White House - allowing its engineers to report internal technical intelligence of Chinese companies to the U.S. while providing equipment maintenance services to Chinese customers.

If true, this would mean that ASML is not just a high-end equipment manufacturer, but may have once tried to play the role of "spies." Although ASML has publicly denied the accusations, calling the description in the book "inaccurate," there are still many details worth exploring behind the incident, considering multiple facts and timelines.

In January 2023, the Netherlands and the United States reached an agreement to clearly restrict the export of advanced lithography equipment to China. According to the agreement, the Netherlands stopped exporting deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines to China from September 2023; by January 2024, the ban was fully implemented. More advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) equipment had already been prohibited from being sold to China after 2019. The agreement also stipulated that during the transition period, ASML could only deliver a small number of DUV equipment from signed contracts and could not make new sales.

However, according to the book, ASML CEO Peter Wennink was suspected of delivering more DUV equipment than allowed by the agreement during this period. This move raised strong concerns among Dutch officials. Then-Prime Minister Mark Rutte personally warned Wennink: "You are stepping into a dangerous area."

Facing possible punitive measures from the U.S., Wennink is said to have proposed an alternative plan: allowing ASML to continue providing maintenance and technical support for thousands of equipment already deployed in China, but as a trade-off, company engineers were required to regularly pass on information about the technological progress observed in Chinese customers to the U.S.

This proposal has drawn attention because ASML engineers indeed have unique access rights. They frequently enter China's top wafer fabrication plants such as SMIC and Yangtze Memory Technologies, participating in equipment installation, debugging, and maintenance, and have firsthand knowledge of customers' process routes, capacity planning, and even yield data. A unnamed White House official quoted in the book said: "ASML may be our most effective spy there."

Currently, ASML insists that it never proposed the so-called "monitoring of Chinese customers" and emphasizes that the company has always complied with all applicable laws.

Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1849646247747975/

Statement: The article represents the views of the author.