Julius

The deeper you go into the semiconductor supply chain, the less believable it becomes. > TSMC, a company on a small island, produces over 90% of the world’s most advanced chips > TSMC relies on dutch company ASML for EUV lithography machines > ASML depends on German Company Carl Zeiss, the only firm in the world capable of making mirrors precise enough for ASML’s requirements. > The light source for ASML’s EUV machines is produced by a single company in San Diego. > The photoresists used to print transistor patterns are produced by Japanese firms like JSR and Tokyo Ohka Kogyo. > The ultra-pure quartz needed to make silicon wafers comes entirely from a single mine in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. > The copper and rare-earth materials inside chips are mined and refined across Chile, the Congo, and China. > The specialized gases used in chipmaking, like neon and fluorine, largely come from Ukraine and Japan. > The design blueprints for these chips often come from American companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and Apple, which rely on software tools from U.S. firms like Synopsys and Cadence. Remove any single piece and the whole system collapses.