That’s my point: the key inputs are not materials but the high tech machinery and the skills to operate them.

Which is better because?

We can't copy/paste a new ASML no matter how hard you try (aside from open sourcing all of their IPs). Even if you do, by the time you copy one generation of machine, they're on a new generation and you now still have the bottleneck on the same place.

Not to mention that with these monopolies they can just keep increasing prices ad infinitum.

	▲	jiggawatts 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		ASML's secret sauce is not that secret or uncopyable. The Chinese are already working on their clone of the Twinscan tools. Veritasium recently made a good video on the ASML machine design: https://youtu.be/MiUHjLxm3V0 The outcome may seem like magic, but the input is "simply" hard work and a big budget: billions of dollars and years of investment into tuning the parameters like droplet size, frequency, etc... The interviews make it clear that the real reason ASML's machines are (currently) unique is that few people had the vision, patience, and money to fund what seemed at the time impossible. The real magic was that ASML managed to hang on by a fingernail and get a successful result before the money ran out. Now that tin droplet EUV lasers have not only been demonstrated to be possible, but have become the essential component of a hugely profitable AI chip manufacturing industry, obtaining funding to develop a clone will be much easier.