>>281228309not him but gotta say, the entry-level chip manufacturing in 1980s was easy, even fucking commies engineers managed to do it despite being assfucked by degenerate 80year old cretins with alcoholic dementia they had for managers and leaders 24/7.
So yeah, starting that tech and developing the early methods is nice, but also in some ways easy, comparably. And usually it's standing on shoulders of previous researchers.
The shit done *today* with optical litography is crazy, so hats down for Taiwan being best at it. Though TSMC's dominance has lot to do with network effects and scale, if Intel didn't screw up in various ways they could have been successful too. ASML's EUV machines are fucking crazy on their own and that is not Asia. The proverbial "rocket science" is fucking nothing compared to leading edge semiconductor and such fields.