Reserved for subscribers
Without ASML, no microchips. The Dutch company is the main European asset in the semiconductor war.
From our special correspondent in Veldhoven (Netherlands), Francois Miguet
Under high protection. In Veldhoven (Netherlands), in an ultra-secure space, where the air is regulated and filtered, ASML manufactures regarding fifty photolithography devices (like the one opposite) per year, which are used to produce semiconductors.
Published on
Subscriber-only audio playback
Ct is a mysterious white machine, the size of a double-decker bus. Not very sexy, it nevertheless makes the best engineers in China salivate. “But how the hell do you copy her? they wonder. It is so important, this machine, that Beijing has put its spies on it. In mid-February, the management of ASML (Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography) revealed that it had caught one of the 1,500 employees of its Chinese subsidiary in the act of stealing confidential data. Yet another attempt that did not surprise Peter Wennink, the CEO of this European flagship. “I invest between 80 and 100 million euros per year in security, and hundreds of my employees work on this subject every day”he informed us a few weeks earlier in his bure…
Bart van Overbeeke/ASML/SP – KHANH RENAUD POUR « LE POINT »
