The Netherlands and the EU will soon have to decide whether safeguarding technological sovereignty calls for the same resolve shown in defending Greenland’s territorial sovereignty.
“Politicians in the US Congress want the Netherlands to restrict exports of very old ASML machines. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is putting Nvidia’s most advanced chips on display for Chinese buyers. Those chips can only be manufactured using ASML’s latest EUV machines, which aren’t allowed to be sold to China. How is that supposed to make sense? The US is selling advanced AI chips while American lawmakers are telling us that the lithography machines we already have in China are too advanced.”
Foreign Trade Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma is the first Dutch official to say it out loud (link in Dutch). Year after year, the Dutch government made assurances that it – and only it – was in control of its own export policy, even though it was patently obvious that it was succumbing to US pressure to tighten semicon export controls to China. Even if a case could be made for a ban on certain systems, that went right out the door when the US allowed export of the world’s leading AI accelerator chips.
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