Over the weekend, news broke that Japan and the Netherlands would be joining the USA in restricting exports of critical semiconductor manufacturing tools to China. The move reflects growing anxieties about China’s domestic chip production efforts (here’s a well-produced explainer), and is designed to cut it off from essential tools supplied by the likes of ASML in the Netherlands, and Nikon and Tokyo Electron in Japan.
If you’re counting down the days until the release of The Super…