When China eventually catches up on conventional lithography, the goalposts will simply shift to silicon photonics and optical logic, a transition DARPA laid the publicly visible groundwork for decades ago through programs like POEM and PIPES while keeping the mature implementations strictly classified until needed.
Are these tippy top-secret Skunkworks Final Boss Wunderwaffen with you in the room right now?
More and more there seems to be some wishful thinking that the USA has another hidden generation of SR-71 or Stealth tech type surprises squirrelled away for a rainy day. Find this hard to believe when the best brains of the generation got hoovered up by hedge funds, click merchants, and now token slingers.
Is there anything to stop the Chinese doing a silicon photonics end run independent of cracking EUV at scale? Or is getting EUV right first on the critical path? This part is a genuine question.
