Sam Fenwick
speaker
1,068 appearances
10 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 5d ago
Sam Fenwick’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 4.
Appearances
She studies who controls the chip supply chain.
These machines print circuits onto silicon at a scale that's almost impossible to picture.
A golf ball on the moon.
I'm just trying to envisage that.
That's phenomenal precision, isn't it?
I mean, I can barely hit a golf ball when it's right in front of me.
And precision like that doesn't come cheap.
The most advanced of these machines, the cutting edge model TSMC needs for the smallest chip, sells for around $380 million.
So here we have three companies, three choke points.
Our producer today is David Kan, and he's been adding up what these businesses are all worth.
And every one of those three depends on something none of them control, where the chip actually gets made, which is where it gets dangerous.
When one company makes the only machine that matters, controlling who gets it becomes a weapon.
And that decision isn't ASML's, it's the government's.
The United States, working with the Dutch and the Japanese, has blocked ASML from selling its advanced machines to China.
But could China just build its own?
So a handful of governments decide whether China gets to buy these machines.
And that's exactly the fight right now.
And Emily warns that if it happens, it's not just China that could get hurt.
And all of it depends on one place, Taiwan.
There's no second source, no backup island, an island that governs itself, but that China claims as its own.
Showing 861–880 of 1,068 · page 44 of 54
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