But I think that point of view underestimates EU a bit. I know it's a running joke that EU is becoming an open air museum etc, while the US companies are pushing forward all the innovation.
Well, if I look at biggest EU companies I see global healthcare leaders, ASML, chemical industry leaders, luxury brands etc. When I look at biggest US companies, I see quite a bit of, let's say, irrational exuberance that exist mostly in the virtual world.
This is mostly the anti-regulation crowd led on by the FT who are a bit stuck in their own US centric viewpoints. I'm fine with that, the amount of innovation done in the EU isn't anything less for that. The big difference is the ready availability of massive amounts of capital and that's mostly a SV thing, which Seattle excepted (MSFT) the US also hasn't been able to replicate. If you take that one outlier out the rest of the world is not too dissimilar.
That reason is that ASML wouldn't be in the position it is without USA's early investment into EUV technology, and ASML relies on its own imports from USA that USA could block (not allowed under current US legislation but they could obviously change that if there was enough political pressure).
No need for NATO conspiracy theories. USA is a good partner to ASML. Why the hell would they piss off their most valued partner to satisfy a country (China) that is dead set on copying as much of their technology as they can?
But within NATO ASML is strategic, there is zero doubt about that.
It is however possible that Canon will at some point in the future be able to compete with ASML for all of its line-up, but Canon will have to make up for at least a decade of lag and for the industry that means that they're not relevant for the cutting edge. The amount of investment that they would need to make to be a serious threat to ASML is something they do not currently have in the works.
Industry watchers are skeptical about Canon's 'NIL' product, there are serious concerns about flaws in the process resulting in low yields. Maybe they'll be able to iron those out and then they may well become a contender. But it's an entirely different path than the one that ASML took and as those bets come a bit of a risky one (but with correspondingly high pay out if they get it to work). For now ASML is 90% of the market or so...
