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Weekly edition World in brief Opinion United States Finance & economics Business China Asia Europe Britain Middle East & Africa Artificial intelligence Games China | Dutch masters Has China obtained the world’s most important machine? Its Dutch manufacturer is fighting to rebut American claims
Share Workers are seen in front of a "High NA EUV" lithography system at an Intel facility in Hillsboro, Oregon, U.S. Photograph: Reuters Jul 5th 2026
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Taipei
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7 min read The Dutch punch above their weight in technology transfers that shaped the modern world. In the 17th century their financial and farming innovations spread to Britain, spurring the Industrial Revolution and the British empire’s expansion. Peter the Great, a Russian tsar, studied Dutch shipbuilding techniques to build the navy that made Russia a maritime power in the 18th century. And in the 1970s a Pakistani scientist, A.Q. Khan, stole blueprints from a Dutch lab to launch his country’s nuclear-weapons programme and seed similar efforts in North Korea, Iran and Libya.
Could Dutch know-how have just tilted the global balance of power again? So the Trump administration alleges. Since 2019 America has blocked the export to China of the extreme-ultraviolet, or EUV, lithography machines (pictured) that make the world’s most advanced semiconductors. These machines, whose creations power the most capable artificial-intelligence models, are made only by ASML, a Dutch firm. In recent weeks, however, America’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, has thrown the company into crisis by sharing with it his concerns that one of these machines may have found its way to China.
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