It has never happened in the history of the world that a company or country could maintain its technological advance indefinitely.

Either China will catch up on this or that particular technology will become obsolete. But it is certain that they won't stay behind forever (measured in a small number of decades at most).

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codeulike 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Right but if you dont say how long it will take them, youre not really saying anything.

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adrian_b 39 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

There is no doubt that less than 10 years will be needed for China to be able to do something equivalent to what the ASML machines can do now.

What is far less certain is what ASML will be able to do at that time, i.e. if they will be able to progress significantly over the state-of-the-art of today, or they will reach a plateau.

Besides China, there is a renewed effort in Japan to become competitive again, so ASML may face in the future both Chinese and Japanese competitors.

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mytailorisrich 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> measured in a small number of decades at most

	▲	codeulike an hour ago \| parent [-]
		By "a small number of decades" do you mean from now, or starting from 15 years ago when the ASML Twinscan NXE:3100 made it debut?

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wincy an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean you’ve definitely just had technology disappear though, usually because of war. Damascus Steel was a lost military tech. We could certainly end up just accidentally (or worse, intentionally) bomb this stuff out of existence so nobody has it.