bj oplaat

The CEO of ASML said Europe is "quite behind" in the AI race. This is not a politician. This is the man who controls the only machines on earth that can print advanced chips. Every semiconductor fab from TSMC to Samsung needs his approval to exist. And he did not stop there. Europe has been having the sovereignty conversation for three years. Build fabs. Reduce dependence. Catch up. It sounds right. He said it is the wrong order entirely. His reasoning is blunt. Semiconductor manufacturing is only needed if you have people buying the chips. If Europe built a two nanometer fab today, most of those wafers would ship straight to the United States. Because the US buys 80% of the world's advanced chips. Europe buys almost none. You cannot manufacture your way to relevance. You have to create demand first. His actual sequence: start with the market. Build AI applications. Then AI products. Then chip design. Then and only then does chip manufacturing make sense. Europe skipped four steps and went straight to the last one. The sovereignty debate is loud in Brussels right now because of US export controls on AI models. Politicians are scared. The instinct is to build. He is saying the instinct is wrong. You do not get sovereignty by building factories. You get it by having something the world wants to buy. (Watch the full 11 minutes Interview at @BloombergTV on YouTube)