IO’s week - A geopolitical boomerang

By Bart Brouwers

In our Sunday newsletter, we, as editors, reflect on the past seven days. We do this on the initiative of our cartoonist Albert Jan Rasker. He chooses a subject, draws a picture, and we take it from there.

Albert Jan couldn’t ignore it this week: the deluge of reports about how the West is trying to squeeze China when it comes to chip technology and China’s dual reactions to it. On the one hand, Xi is making sure we get a taste of our own medicine (for example, by restricting exports of graphite, which we need for battery production); on the other, his country is accelerating its own R&D. Most notable here is the introduction of the 5G Kirin 9000S processor, designed by HiSilicon and manufactured by China’s largest chip supplier SMIC.

It’s the boomerang theory in geopolitics, but fortunately for readers of this newsletter, this was no surprise. Back in March, we wrote that ASML’s export ban of their – then-only high-quality – chip machines is shortsighted, hypocritical, and counterproductive. “The European strategic autonomy so fervently promoted is as yet a wash. The export ban on ASML exposes Europe’s weakness,” we wrote. Meanwhile, this has only gotten worse, now that the U.S. has unequivocally decreed that national (Dutch) export rules no longer apply to ASML and that it must comply with U.S. law. European autonomy? One would almost start longing for a new presidential term of Donald Trump, so we can distance ourselves from our traditional ally a little easier.