In a high-security laboratory in Shenzhen, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence, smartphones and weapons essential to Western military dominance.
Completed in early 2025 and currently being tested, the prototype almost fills an entire workshop. It was built by a team of former engineers at Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project.
EUV machines are at the heart of a technological cold war. They use beams of extreme ultraviolet light to etch circuits thousands of times thinner than a human hair onto silicon wafers, a capability currently monopolized by the West. The smaller the circuits, the more powerful the chips.