Secret Global Superpower-The world’s leaders have been paying attention to what is happening in Veldhoven, a relatively small town in the Netherlands with a population of only about 45 000. As a result, Veldhoven has become the center of the global economy. What is silently taking place in the background has the potential to drastically alter the course of human history for the better, bring about a complete economic breakdown, or maybe it might make an old empire rise once again.
Please pardon my brief historical digression; it explains a lot. Several dozen individuals resided here along the Rotte River in the year 980. Over the course of the following few hundred years, those few dozen individuals expanded into a hamlet of over 500 individuals, but just as the community appeared to be hitting new heights, a significant river flood struck and destroyed the majority of the infrastructure. Due to the flooding, this region did not recoup for another 100 years. When the Rotte River had a dam constructed in the middle of the 1200s, it helped recover a lot of the inundated land that the river had ravaged a century earlier, but nobody knew at the time that this area would become one of the most significant economic project areas in history. Soon after, Rotterdam—named for the waterway and the dam that enabled the town to exist—was formally incorporated into Holland by Prince William IV of Orange. Then Prince William declared a canal project for Rotterdam that would enable ships to enter and exit the city reasonably easily. It was this canal project that unintentionally altered the course of history and created the modern world as we know it. Although foreign commerce and ship technology were still quite primitive in the 1300s, the canal did contribute to the growth of Rotterdam’s local economy at the time. As a result, for the most part, this port and canal were only used for trade between neighboring nations. But then an odd thing happened: a race to establish the next great world empire began. Spain, Portugal, and Britain all began spending money on new ship technologies in an effort to spread their empires across the globe. Over the course of the following several centuries, globalization and colonization spread rapidly throughout the world. Because Rotterdam was so near to all of these countries, it suddenly developed into one of the world’s major trading centers.
  The Dutch, on the other hand, concentrated on ruling a small number of carefully chosen nations and setting up trading stations all over the world in the 1600s, while other powers like the British, Spanish, and Portuguese were focused on extending theirs and competing how much territory they could capture. Instead of just trying to increase the size of their empire, the Dutch chose a few strategic locations for resource exploitation, built a few forts, and did all of this. The Dutch also made a large rise in their investments in agricultural and general technological study during this period, and they transitioned their economic policy toward free markets and universal property rights. The Netherlands quickly acquired the moniker “Dutch Empire” as a result of everything mentioned above, including the harbors, the trading posts, and the new economic strategy.
  Now, at that time, the Dutch Empire had an absurd amount of influence over world commerce. Additionally, they had the power to decide which countries could obtain essential resources like luxury goods, rye, and seasonings. In reality, by 1670, half of all European commerce passed through the ports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam and was carried by Dutch ships. Even though it only had about 2 million inhabitants at the time of some of the greatest powers in history, the Netherlands controlled international commerce. What, then, truly transpired with this trading Empire? Actually, it never really went anywhere because the Dutch had been one of the world’s largest commercial countries even after the decolonization of their Empire. If you were to look at the leading producers of products globally, you might notice something interesting. Leading exporters may come as no surprise to many, as these countries have long held the top exporting positions: China, the United States, Germany, and Japan. It makes sense because they all have sizable populations, but who do you believe to be the following biggest exporter of goods? Does it have a long history, like the UK or France? How about a nation with a sizable population like Brazil or India? Perhaps it’s a developing industrial giant like Indonesia? As it turns out, despite having a population of just over 17 million, the Netherlands continues to be one of the world’s top exporters of goods. The harbor of Rotterdam is still the busiest port in Europe and the second busiest port outside of Asia, which is just one of the many reasons why the Dutch are still essential to international commerce. Since the height of the Dutch Empire, European commerce has continued to pass through the harbor of Rotterdam.
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  However, something that occurred lately may be able to demonstrate just how powerful the Dutch are. In terms of its influence, an organization by the name of Advanced Semiconductor Material Lithography first opened its doors in 1984. The business began as a combined endeavor between ASM International and Phillips, two other Dutch businesses, and ultimately moved its offices to the Dutch town of Veldhoven. At the time, the company’s primary goal was to construct the machinery used to make computer chips; in other words, they built the apparatus other companies used to make the chips, and those other companies would then ship those processors to companies like Apple, where they would go on and make computers. That would fundamentally alter the course of human history; however, for a while, ASML was only one tiny participant in a vast market of machinery manufacturers.
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Then the business experienced a remarkable development. Over the past 60 years, the process of making computer processors has become much more difficult, making some businesses unable to produce them. Transistors, which make up the majority of a computer, were once about one centimeter long, or roughly the size of a p, but over the past six decades, they have shrunk steadily, increasing computers’ efficiency year after year. In fact, this is where the name Moore’s Law originates; in essence, the reason why our processing capacity has increased so quickly is that we have been able to shrink transistors. In the late 1990s, US Department of Energy researchers observed that Moore’s Law would ultimately come to an end because we would be unable to produce smaller chips, which would prevent computing capacity from improving over time. And since this presented a significant challenge, the Department of Energy’s experts set to work, ultimately discovering an alternative method for producing computer chips known as extreme ultraviolet lithography. In essence, it was a very speculative and complex method to create a computer processor, but it appeared to work on paper, and oddly enough, only one company-ASML-met all the requirements for licensing, developing, testing, and constructing this new technology.
  As a result, ASML continued to develop and improve this technology from the early 2000s until 2018, when a breakthrough occurred. By a wide margin, ASML was effective in creating the finest computer chip manufacturing machine in the world. Remember how in the 1960s, semiconductors were one centimeter long? As of right now, ASML produces them at a scale of three nanometers, which is comparable to a DNA helix. The next nearest opponent may be about five years behind ASML, according to some experts, but most of its rivals are actually 10+ years behind ASML in terms of their capacity to produce chips as a result of this invention. As a result of its success and ground-breaking technology, ASML has become one of the first new monopolies of the modern era. Because they basically have complete control over who can access and use the most recent chip-making technology, ASML is currently in the news—for both good and negative reasons. The fact that ASML’s equity price has increased by well over 300 percent since 2018 and that it is now among the most valuable tech businesses in the world and the most valuable tech company in Europe is a plus. It has additionally been able to expand rapidly because it capitalized on the worldwide chip shortage that began in 2020 and has continued ever since.Â
  As you might have predicted, ASML is truly in the midst of a technological and geopolitical conflict between two nations. China and the States. If you can produce the finest computer chips in the world you probably have a major technological and fiscal advantage over other countries. A country will become less of a danger if its economic and technological developments, such as those in AI military tech fall behind, if it is a generation behind the rest of the world in terms of technological capability. And that is a major reason why the United States recently passed a deal with the Netherlands and Japan to restrict China’s access to any advanced chip manufacturing technology. Despite the fact that this deal appeared to have been overshadowed recently by many other news stories, it will be one of the most significant stories of this year. This agreement forces major companies that want to use newer computer chips to locate their plants anywhere outside of China, effectively keeping Chinese technology one generation behind that of the West. However, China had already started researching and developing its own semiconductor manufacturing technology because it had anticipated this agreement a few years in advance. However, many experts think that China could be at least a decade away from catching up to the Netherlands and ASML. China’s foreign minister reacted to the Dutch trade agreement with the United States and Japan by saying that such bullying and hegemonic practices gravely breach market rules and disrupt the global trade order. To top it all off, the United States revealed a 76 billion dollar program to woo chip makers back to the country in an effort to lessen its dependence on China for not only computer processors but also other types of technology. Almost immediately after that announcement, major projects in the United States were announced by chip manufacturers from all over the world, many of whom would be utilizing ASML’s most recent technology. Given that ASML gets to choose who receives the most cutting-edge chips and that they currently support the United States, ASML is actually a crucial participant in the conflict between China and the United States over computer chips.
  We discussed ports and commerce at the outset of the essay. China is taking one significant step that will at least partially offset the negative effects of these trade agreements. The Dutch may support the United States in chip production, but it appears that they support China in transportation. This is due to the fact that China accounts for about 50% of the harbor of Rotterdam’s revenue. Additionally, they have received sizable investments from the Chinese shipping firm Cosco. In essence, China views the port of Rotterdam as a critical stop along its new Silk Road and is working to increase its influence over the most significant port in Europe. Think about it: who would have guessed that the Dutch would serve as the theater of conflict between China and the United States? Though not exclusively in the Netherlands, the future superpowers of the world may be decided by the tiny Dutch municipality of Veldhoven, which has only 45 000 residents, and a third of them are employed by ASML. The Netherlands and the municipality of Veldhoven have once again developed a secret superpower on the global stage, whether it be through commerce or technology.