Comment by KK7NIL
> Aren’t Philips and ASML both effectively under American control anyway?
IDK about Philips but ASML follows US export restrictions due to a deal it agreed to when it bought a US company a few decades ago, yes.
> Is the TSMC part of the stack that special in terms of actual IP (versus more squishy organizational know-how)?
I don't want to go into too many details as I work in the Intel Foundry but it's certainly both. We'd be very happy to know how TSMC does some specific things, let me put it that way. At the same time, our execution has been dubious since 10 nm.
IIRC it wasn’t because of an acquisition but part of a joint venture with ASML, Intel, and some other companies to develop EUV with a bunch of Department of Energy funding that started in the late 1990s.