The US says ASML’s top chip tool may be in China. ASML says it isn’t.
The US says ASML’s top chip tool may be in China. ASML says it isn’t.
美国称阿斯麦（ASML）顶级芯片设备可能已流入中国，阿斯麦予以否认。
According to Bloomberg, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has, in a series of recent meetings, told senior ASML executives he’s concerned that one of the Dutch chipmaker’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines — the EUV systems that are the only tools on Earth capable of printing the most advanced semiconductor patterns — may have ended up in China. 据彭博社报道，美国商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克（Howard Lutnick）在近期的一系列会议中向阿斯麦高管表示，他担心这家荷兰芯片制造商的一台极紫外光刻机（EUV）可能已经流入中国。EUV系统是地球上唯一能够印制最先进半导体图案的工具。
That would be a major breach of export controls that have barred ASML from selling EUV to China since the first Trump administration. It’s a serious claim. Senior administration officials told Bloomberg they have evidence that ASML shipped EUV-related components and transport equipment to China, though they’ve declined, repeatedly, to show it — to Bloomberg or, apparently, to ASML itself. 如果属实，这将严重违反自特朗普第一任期以来禁止阿斯麦向中国出售EUV设备的出口管制规定。这是一个严重的指控。美国政府高级官员告诉彭博社，他们有证据表明阿斯麦向中国运送了与EUV相关的零部件和运输设备，但他们多次拒绝向彭博社，显然也拒绝向阿斯麦公司本身展示这些证据。
The company says no such machine exists in China and has never existed there. The Commerce Department didn’t respond to Bloomberg’s questions about whether it has evidence of an actual EUV system on Chinese soil. 阿斯麦公司表示，中国境内不存在此类机器，也从未存在过。对于是否掌握中国境内存在实际EUV系统的证据，美国商务部未回应彭博社的置评请求。
You might think this isn’t worth paying attention to if you’re outside the chip industry, but it is. ASML is a Dutch company most people have never heard of, but it is, by a wide margin, the most important company in the global AI buildout that isn’t named Nvidia or one of the hyperscalers. 如果你不是芯片行业内人士，可能会觉得这不值得关注，但事实并非如此。阿斯麦是一家大多数人从未听说过的荷兰公司，但它是全球人工智能建设中，除英伟达（Nvidia）或大型云服务商之外，最重要的公司，且优势巨大。
It makes the only machines on the planet capable of EUV lithography — the process of printing the microscopic circuit patterns that define the most advanced chips. Every cutting-edge processor made by TSMC, the foundry behind Nvidia’s and Apple’s chips, depends on ASML tools that took the company roughly two decades and untold billions to develop. There is, at present, no second supplier. 它制造了全球唯一能够进行EUV光刻的机器——这种工艺用于印制定义最先进芯片的微观电路图案。台积电（TSMC）作为英伟达和苹果芯片的代工厂，其生产的每一款尖端处理器都依赖于阿斯麦的设备，而这些设备是阿斯麦耗时约二十年、投入无数资金研发出来的。目前，市场上没有第二家供应商。
That monopoly has made ASML Europe’s most valuable public company, with a market capitalization that has been trading in the neighborhood of $700 billion as of this week, up sharply over the past year on the back of insatiable AI-driven chip demand. That scale is exactly why the China question matters so much. 这种垄断地位使阿斯麦成为欧洲市值最高的上市公司。截至本周，其市值一直在7000亿美元左右徘徊，在过去一年里，受人工智能驱动的芯片需求激增的影响，其市值大幅上涨。这种规模正是中国问题如此重要的原因。
If even one EUV machine made it into Chinese hands, it would represent one of the most consequential breaches of the export-control regime the U.S. has built over the past several years to keep advanced AI capability out of Beijing’s military and industrial base. 如果哪怕只有一台EUV机器落入中国手中，都将构成美国过去几年建立的出口管制体系中最严重的违规行为之一，该体系旨在防止北京的军事和工业基础获得先进的人工智能能力。
I sat down with ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet six weeks ago, well before this story broke, and asked him directly about the China question. Fouquet told me ASML tracks every machine it has ever shipped — they’re either in active use with monitored customers or have been dismantled and returned to the company. 六周前，在这一新闻爆出之前，我曾与阿斯麦首席执行官克里斯托弗·福凯（Christophe Fouquet）坐下来交谈，并直接询问了关于中国的问题。福凯告诉我，阿斯麦会追踪其发运的每一台机器——它们要么在受监控的客户处正常使用，要么已被拆解并退回公司。
He said the firm built an internal firewall years ago: Employees who can access EUV technology, documentation, and training are walled off from those who can’t, and ASML’s China-based staff sit on the wrong side of that wall by design. 他表示，该公司多年前就建立了内部防火墙：能够接触EUV技术、文档和培训的员工与无法接触的员工被隔离开来，而阿斯麦的中国员工在设计上就处于这道墙的另一侧。
He argued the only reason ASML could build an EUV machine at all was that 80% of it already existed from decades of prior knowledge, and that solving the one genuinely new problem — generating EUV light itself — took 20 years on its own. His broader point seemed to be that you can’t reverse-engineer a machine you’ve never had, and nobody in China has had one. 他认为，阿斯麦之所以能制造出EUV机器，唯一的原因是其80%的技术基础源于几十年的知识积累，而解决唯一真正的新问题——产生EUV光本身——就耗费了20年时间。他更深层的观点似乎是：你无法逆向工程一台你从未拥有过的机器，而中国没有人拥有过它。
There’s also a simpler commercial logic that cuts against the idea that ASML would risk its export license to quietly arm a Chinese customer. ASML does sell older-generation deep ultraviolet tools to China — gear it first shipped a decade ago — but Fouquet framed that explicitly as a protective calculation, not a loophole. 还有一个更简单的商业逻辑反驳了阿斯麦会为了悄悄武装中国客户而冒出口许可证被吊销风险的说法。阿斯麦确实向中国销售老一代的深紫外光刻机（DUV）——这是十年前就开始发运的设备——但福凯明确将其描述为一种保护性考量，而非漏洞。
The idea, he suggested, is that it keeps enough of a generational gap that customers can still do business — but without manufacturing its own future competitor. ASML expects roughly 20% of its 2026 revenue to come from already-permitted sales to China. Risking the EUV ban entirely would put that revenue, and the company’s standing as the most valuable monopoly in European industry, on the line over a single illegal sale. 他暗示，其理念是保持足够的代际差距，使客户仍能开展业务，但又不至于制造出自己未来的竞争对手。阿斯麦预计其2026年约20%的收入将来自已获准对华销售的业务。为了单笔非法销售而冒着彻底违反EUV禁令的风险，将危及这部分收入，以及该公司作为欧洲工业界最有价值垄断企业的地位。
None of this proves the allegations are false. The government hasn’t yet made its evidence public, and it’s worth withholding judgment until it does. The Commerce Department, under Lutnick’s leadership, agreed late last year to put up to $150 million of taxpayer money into xLight, a startup developing a next-generation light-source technology that’s been written about as a long-term challenge to the core of ASML’s EUV monopoly. 以上这些都不能证明指控是虚假的。政府尚未公开其证据，在公开之前，我们有必要保留判断。在卢特尼克的领导下，美国商务部去年底同意投入高达1.5亿美元的纳税人资金支持xLight，这是一家开发下一代光源技术的初创公司，该技术被报道为对阿斯麦EUV垄断核心的长期挑战。
xLight’s own CEO told me last year that the company sees itself as a future partner to ASML, not a rival, building hardware meant to plug into ASML’s machines rather than replace them. When I put that framing to Fouquet in May, he was polite about it but unconvinced; ASML, he made clear, doesn’t see itself as needing xLight’s technology to keep its lead. xLight的首席执行官去年曾告诉我，该公司将自己视为阿斯麦未来的合作伙伴而非竞争对手，其制造的硬件旨在接入阿斯麦的机器，而不是取代它们。当我在五月份向福凯提出这一说法时，他表现得很礼貌，但并不信服；他明确表示，阿斯麦认为自己不需要xLight的技术来保持领先地位。
Does that have anything to do with why Lutnick is suddenly pressing ASML on EUV? Nothing public connects the two. It could be entirely unrelated. But a federal official scrutinizing a monopoly while his own agency has money riding on a startup angling to improve that monopoly’s core technology is worth examining. 这与卢特尼克突然就EUV问题向阿斯麦施压有关系吗？目前没有任何公开信息将两者联系起来。这可能完全无关。但一位联邦官员在审查一家垄断企业的同时，其所属机构又向一家试图改进该垄断企业核心技术的初创公司注资，这确实值得审视。
xLight isn’t the only outside bet on the future of lithography. Peter Thiel — who has his own long-running ties to Trump’s political orbit — has backed Substrate, a separate startup explicitly pursuing its own EUV-rival technology, with ambitions to compete with ASML more directly than xLight says it intends to. xLight并不是对光刻技术未来的唯一外部押注。彼得·蒂尔（Peter Thiel）——他与特朗普的政治圈子有着长期的联系——支持了Substrate，这是一家明确追求自身EUV竞争技术的初创公司，其竞争野心比xLight所宣称的要直接得多。
As Bloomberg notes, a bipartisan bill moving through Congress would go much further than EUV — it calls for an effective ban on all of ASML’s deep ultraviolet (DUV) shipments to China, the less advanced lithography tools that account for roughly a fifth of the company’s expected 2026 revenue. The bill cleared a key committee in April, and the Trump administration hasn’t taken a formal position on it. 正如彭博社所指出的，国会正在审议的一项两党法案的影响将远超EUV——该法案要求实际上禁止阿斯麦向中国出口所有深紫外光刻机（DUV），这些技术含量较低的光刻工具约占该公司2026年预期收入的五分之一。该法案已于四月份通过了一个关键委员会的审议，而特朗普政府尚未对此采取正式立场。