China Completes Secret EUV Lithography Prototype in Shenzhen

The news rhymes with the Soviet Union’s 1949 RDS-1 atomic test—another moment when a rival power replicated a technology Washington thought was ring-fenced. It underscores the long arc of technological diffusion: export controls, from the 1949 COCOM lists to the 2022 U.S. chip rules, can delay but rarely stop determined state-backed efforts, especially when globalised talent and secondary markets leak know-how. In the near term the prototype is bulky, optics-poor and years from mass production, yet it signals that the semiconductor chokepoint the West erected after 2018 is eroding. Over a 100-year horizon the episode will be read as part of a broader de-globalisation cycle—countries vying to nationalise critical supply chains the way Britain did with radar in 1939 or the U.S. with GPS in the 1970s—potentially reshaping the geography of digital power even if China’s machine never equals ASML’s efficiency.