Technological war, race for electronic chips and relations with China: semiconductors are at the heart of current global tensions. BFM met Christophe Fouquet, at the head of ASML, a key player in an industry that has become strategic for artificial intelligence, innovation and global technological sovereignty.
This is one of the hottest technological debates today. During the 10th edition of VivaTech, visitors, experts and tech players were undoubtedly unable to miss it: questions of sovereignty are omnipresent, whether in artificial intelligence, space, robotics or even the key semiconductor sector. Because the semiconductor industry is at the heart of the global digital economy.
From smartphones to cars, the cloud, AI to critical infrastructure, no modern technology works without chips. Players like Nvidia or TSMC thus occupy a central place in this ecosystem. For Christophe Fouquet, head of ASML, the question is more essential today than ever. His company is one of the very few in the world capable of producing the machines essential to manufacturing the most advanced chips.
During an interview with the Tech & Co show on BFM Business, Christophe Fouquet insisted on the importance of dialogue between industry and governments. “The first thing, I think, is that we realize today that the dialogue between industry and governments, it may be Europe, it may of course be the French, German governments, etc., is very important. I think that in Europe, in relation to what happened in the United States, in China, the dialogue has been quite weak. It is a responsibility of both parties, both the governments but also the industry,” he argues.
“It’s not enough to innovate”
He also recalled the need to clarify the roles of each person to strengthen industrial competitiveness. “The second thing is to understand what the role and responsibilities of each person are. And what I explained a few days ago is that the role of European or national governments is to create conditions for the industry, so that the industry can develop and can be competitive,” he continued.
According to him, this also requires a more favorable framework for innovation: “This must be a very important element. This is why when you speak with some of my colleagues, they talk a lot about deregulation, simplification, reduction of time to obtain permits, flexibility, etc. All these elements contribute to creating an environment that will be favorable to innovation, to industry and to the competitiveness of the industry. Because it is not enough to innovate.”
The 53-year-old, who has been with ASML since 2008, insisted on the need for Europe to strongly accelerate in terms of innovation in the face of the United States and China. “We also need to innovate more quickly, more efficiently than China or the United States. The role of industry, on the other hand, in this environment, is to create value and create this ecosystem that you are talking about. Is that possible? Good sure it is possible, but today we are quite far from it,” he explained, highlighting the shortcomings of the European ecosystem in AI and semiconductors.
Christophe Fouquet also recalled the economic and industrial imbalance: “The European market represents approximately 20% of the world economy. To give you an example, for ASML, Europe represents 1% of our business. When we look at chip manufacturing advanced, it’s very little. The only factory that makes advanced chips is in Ireland, it’s owned by Intel…. and when you look at AI applications, it’s even less.”
Relations with Beijing
How can we talk about this industry without mentioning the Chinese giant? China today occupies a paradoxical place in semiconductors: the world’s largest market and a rapidly growing industrial player, it nevertheless remains dependent on foreign technologies for the most advanced chips. Since 2019, and even more so in 2022 and 2023, the United States has implemented a vast system of export restrictions directly targeting Beijing.
These measures concern in particular advanced chips for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, the most sophisticated manufacturing equipment, including that of ASML under American pressure, as well as semiconductor design software. Players like Nvidia must also obtain specific licenses to continue exporting certain components to China.
For Christophe Fouquet, these restrictions not only have an economic impact, they also reshape the dynamics of global innovation. “There is a certain period of time between the machines that we send to China. The machines in China were manufactured at ASML for the first time in 2015, so they are more than 10 years old,” he explains, specifying that the following generations, much more advanced, remain out of reach of the Chinese market.
“Since these machines, we have created seven, eight other generations of machines. They are available in China and allow us to create chips, but chips which are of course much less advanced than those that TSMC or Intel can create today.” The basic question remains: do these restrictions harm the economic model of Western manufacturers? For Christophe Fouquet, the equation is more complex and involves a delicate balance.
“The business aspect is a short-term aspect. It’s not a very important part of the discussion. I think the balance to find between banning and not banning these technologies is to understand what the impact of the ban is. When you ban a technology, you very strongly motivate the other party to develop this technology,” he emphasizes. And to add that it is above all a question of “finding a balance” between maintaining a technological advantage and limiting incentives for Chinese industrial autonomy.
Race to miniaturization
But in this geopolitical and economic “turmoil”, we almost forget the essential: at the heart of semiconductors, there is also a race to the infinitely small. The unit of measurement is the nanometer, current technologies are already reaching extremely fine levels, with even more advanced perspectives. Why this permanent race towards ever more miniaturization?
To produce ever more efficient chips, it is necessary to integrate a colossal number of transistors, billions or tens of billions, or even more. “It’s a race for smallness,” explains Christophe Fouquet, whose machines today make it possible to engrave circuits of the order of 8 nanometers, even if the engraving nodes displayed commercially are much smaller (2 nm, for example, and less soon), or “10,000 times smaller than a human hair”.
He recalls that this evolution has been guided for decades by Moore’s law, according to which “every two years, the number of transistors in a chip doubles”. A dynamic driven by customers like TSMC, Apple or Samsung Electronics, who are constantly asking for finer engravings. But with the rise of artificial intelligence, this pressure has accelerated further, with demand now being “ten times more transistors every two years”.
And to carry out this work successfully, you need machines that are up to the task. However, mastery of the most advanced equipment is based on an accumulation of know-how spread over nearly 40 years. “It is impossible to make the machine that we are making today without having made the previous machine and the one before that,” he explains, emphasizing a technological progression in successive stages, difficult to reproduce for possible competitors, particularly in the case of ‘reverse engineering’.
He also details the industrial scale of this equipment: a machine is approximately the size of a London bus, and can reach “more than 20,000 parts”, often developed by specialized partners. An extremely complex set… the complete manufacture of which requires approximately 4 to 6 months.
