1: PREVIEW HEADLINE: China's Failed Attempt to Reverse Engineer ASML's Top-Tier Fab Machines: Intellectual Property at Risk GUEST NAME: Theresa Fallon (speaking from Brussels) 100-WORD SUMMARY: John Batchelor and Theresa Fallon discussed an anecdote illustra
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 15 October 2025
⏱️ 2 minutes
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Summary
HEADLINE: China's Failed Attempt to Reverse Engineer ASML's Top-Tier Fab Machines: Intellectual Property at Risk
GUEST NAME: Theresa Fallon (speaking from Brussels)
100-WORD SUMMARY: John Batchelor and Theresa Fallon discussed an anecdote illustrating the risk to intellectual property posed by the People's Republic of China concerning ASML, a critical manufacturer of fab machines necessary for TSMC to create top-of-the-line microchips for AI. Fallon shared that high-level ASML engineers were sent to China to "repair" an older machine the Chinese had acquired before sanctions. The engineers discovered the machine was not broken but had been completely taken apart. The Chinese were attempting to reverse engineer the very advanced machinery but were unable to put it back together again properly. This failure led the Chinese to call in the ASML engineers. The conversation highlights China's efforts to acquire proprietary technology by trying to take apart sophisticated equipment.
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| 0:26.6 | This is John Batson, a conversation with colleague Teresa Fallon in Brussels about an incident, an anecdote from ASML, the top of the top of the line of building fab machines that are |
| 0:33.6 | necessary for TSM to take Nvidia and turn it into top of the line |
| 0:37.5 | microchips, the GPUs |
| 0:39.4 | that drive AI. |
| 0:41.3 | This is about China buying an older |
| 0:43.4 | version of the ASML FAB |
| 0:45.4 | and then |
| 0:46.5 | asking for help. |
| 0:49.5 | Why? Why? |
| 0:52.5 | Teresa Fallon. |
| 0:55.3 | ASML, the People's Republic of China, intellectual property, at risk. |
| 1:03.2 | More of this later. |
| 1:04.4 | I haven't seen any comments yet, but I can share an anecdote with you about ASML for a paper I wrote previously. |
| 1:12.6 | I was told by people very close to SML that their high-level engineers were sent to China to repair, |
| 1:21.6 | so-called repair one of their machines that the Chinese had bought before the sanctions were put in place. |
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