GoKawiilThe AI era needs ever faster chips, and ASML’s machines make that possible. They pattern chip features with extreme-ultraviolet light, or EUV—radiation outside the visible spectrum, produced by shooting lasers at tiny molten drops of tin tens of thousands of times a second.
ASML now makes about 90% of all chip-lithography tools worldwide. That dominance has made some people, and governments, uneasy. And would-be competitors are now gunning for its territory.
Read the full story on ASML’s $400 million machine—and the growing threats to its position.
—Clive Thompson
Three things to watch amid Anthropic’s latest feud with the government
In April, Anthropic said it had built an AI model called Mythos that could pose a cybersecurity risk. It then released a safer version called Fable. Days later, the US government placed export controls on it. Within hours, Anthropic revoked access to both models.
“Doomers” have long warned about catastrophic AI risk. But this intervention came over a coding model—not a bioweapon or rogue AI—and the response so far looks less like a safety plan than a reactive policy move.
Here are three things to watch in Anthropic’s standoff with Washington.
—James O'Donnell