This is the third time I've been a runner, and today I'm talking about semiconductors. Articles are pouring in that the United States keeps messing with our semiconductor industry and companies. But usually the stories in the media are just "why are you feeling bad about America?" level. You can't find a solution with that level of talk. If you're dating from person to person, you have to say, "I'm sorry," and you'll get a response like "So what?" You must first understand why the other person is doing what you are doing, so that you can come up with the right countermeasures.


Why America is doing that, there is a book that may give you a hint. Chip War, which could be translated as "semiconductor wars," has been a bestseller ever since it came out in October last year. Journal outlets like the Financial Times named it 'Book of the Year'. As such, we can say that it captures the views of the United States and the wishes of the United States on this issue.

What the story is told is revealed in the design of the book's cover. Instead of stars in the American flag, it's studded with semiconductor chips. Semiconductors are the United States, developed by the United States, brought here, and cannot be taken away by anyone, so we must be prepared for war-like quarrels.

Why the United States is so excited about semiconductors can be seen by looking at the war in Ukraine. At the beginning of the war, there were many expectations that Russia would take a unilateral attack, but this was not the case. There were many variables, but it was this weapon, the 'Javelin', which played a big role.


Aim at the tank from 2 km away. And when you shoot this missile, it flies low (so Russian tanks don't even see the launch), and then soars into the sky in front of the tank and slams it down at a right angle. The person who shoots can safely dodge in the meantime.


It was an expensive weapon that cost more than 100 million won per shot, so we couldn't use it indefinitely. But as expensive as it was, the effect was incomparable. According to the article, 280 of the 300 rounds fired at the beginning of the war hit Russian tanks, rendering them operationally unoperational. It has an accuracy rate of 93%, which is difficult to imagine with conventional weapons.


This was possible because of semiconductors. In fact, those missiles are electronics. The process of chasing an aiming tank, soaring into the air at the right point, positioning the center of gravity and slamming it down accurately is judged and activated by the 200 or so semiconductors on the missile. From the beginning, it was called Texas Instruments, and a semiconductor company was involved in the development.

Russia, on the other hand, doesn't have that technology. We don't have statistics on the war in Ukraine yet, but we have an analysis of the Russian army during the Syrian civil war eight years ago, and 95% of the shells and missiles they used were "membrane bombs" without guidance. If it was right, it was good, and if it didn't, it was unavoidable. This is because there is no semiconductor technology like the United States. A membrane bomb versus a 100 million electronic bomb was the biggest difference that changed many expectations from the beginning.

In this way, the military strength of the United States depends to a large extent on its advanced semiconductor development capabilities. It's about quality over quantity. And that's where the "semiconductor war" level of conflict began.

About 10 years ago, until the end of President Obama, the American mainstream was mostly optimistic about China. I believed that if China worked hard to make things and export them to the United States, and if they tasted money, they would come into the capitalist world created by the United States and live happily ever after, just like Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, which had done before.


Just last week, Warren Buffett said at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting that "the U.S.-China conflict is stupid," and there are still many people who hold this view, especially in the business world.


However, the "hawks," led by military experts, came to a different conclusion. With that in mind, China has allowed itself to develop semiconductors, to buy talent, companies, and technology, and with that, we have information that it is developing "Chinese semiconductors" for high-tech weapons, not just making things to export. When I thought they were making semiconductors for civilian communication, they started making systems that communicate with various weapons, and when they said they were researching AI, they were researching systems that integrated weapons with AI technology.


Former President Trump, who was subsequently elected, initially disagreed with this view. But the hawks succeeded in persuading them based on this information, and then the regime changed, and now President Biden has appeared, but they have also embraced this view and are continuing their "policy toward China."

What kind of methods did the United States, feeling this sense of crisis, come up with to prevent China from developing semiconductors? It has a very close influence with us.

The first way for the United States is to cut off the equipment to make the latest semiconductors. The jargon that comes up is EUV. It's extreme ultra violet, extreme ultraviolet technology. In the future, these EUV machines will be needed to create state-of-the-art semiconductors that crammed materials tightly and densely into smaller spaces.

Currently, there are only two companies in the world that are considered to have such technology. South Korea's Samsung Electronics and Taiwan's TSMC.


This is a photo of the event in 2018 when Samsung began building a new EUV plant on Mars.

I used it as a parody material in the famous "Chungju City YouTube", but rather than focusing too much on the upside-down fabric, that EUV is just as important, and that we need to work harder on how to use that technology so that we can somehow maintain an advantage in this war,


and I would appreciate it if you could use this as an opportunity to remember.


Now, there is only one company on the planet that knows how to build this EUV machine. That's even greater. ASML is a company in the Netherlands. If we block this, and we can't send machinery to China, China will be blocked from making cutting-edge semiconductors.

Holland Hoesande, if the U.S. doesn't sell it, don't you? Yes, I don't. I can't sell it exactly.


The reason can be found again in this photo. If you go to the ASML website, there are several pictures showing the inside of the machine like this. If you look closely, you can copy it, but I think it's a secret, but I wonder if you can show it like that.

But I can't make it even if I show it. Never. This machine is the most complex, sophisticated and difficult machine in the history of mankind. It is known that there are 457,329 different parts, and only ASML has the technology to make them fit without error. There is no company that can imitate it.

Furthermore, many of these 450,000 parts are the most precise parts that only one or two companies on the planet can make. These companies only supply ASML (we don't even need this much for anything else), and the problem is that most of the core components are American components. When the U.S. government asked, "Are you trying to sell this machine to China? Then we can't give you American parts," and this great company is on the verge of shutting down.

And that's not all. Let's say China took the EUV machine anyway. There are the following challenges: Today, semiconductors have become so sophisticated that human hands cannot draw blueprints. You need state-of-the-art software to draw. But all of these software, it's unmade. There are no products from other countries.

Third, let's say we also took out this design software. That doesn't work. In order to run the machine, it is also necessary to contain high-tech materials that match the advanced process, and most of these materials are made in Japan. Even if you have a blueprint and a machine, it's useless if you don't give it to you. I can't run the factory.

Remember that a few years ago, Japan blocked the export of semiconductor materials to our country? Yes, actually, some of those materials. You can think of it as a test of what we are going to do in China and used it against us.


To sum up, the U.S. believes that China is trying to build ultra-precise weapons that can be aimed at them by cultivating semiconductor technology, and in order to stop that, they have decided to block all the avenues necessary for it, from the design to the machine to the raw materials, all made by the United States or its close friends, and there is no replacement.

In the case of EUV, for example, ASML has been developing it for 30 years since the 1990s. It is estimated that it will take 10 to 15 years for China to develop it from now on. In the meantime, the U.S. may be farther afield.

This does not mean that the United States is going to nip all of China's semiconductor nip. I'm talking about semiconductors that are not cutting-edge semiconductors, or "7 nanometers" to be precise, but semiconductors larger than that can be made with the technology we have now, but that can be done as long as it does not harm the United States. Because we're going to put it in cheap manufactured goods that we're going to export to the United States, that's good for the U.S., so we're going to give it some permission.

For example, there was an article like this recently, and there was a flood of comments saying, "America has no principles," but no,


the United States has principles. For China, we're going in two directions: we'll open up what is beneficial to us, and we'll nip in the bud what threatens us.

(The rest of the story is from the soup)