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As Schneider's voice fell silent, the office began to quiet down.

Lunin frowned, seemingly digesting the implications contained in Schneider's recent speech.

If all this were true, it would mean that if Huaxia were to start producing such large-scale equipment, they could rapidly replace ASML's irreplaceable position in the semiconductor industry.

In the short term, the consequence would be that they would lose the Huaxia market forever, especially since Huaxia wouldn't even need their low-end lithography machines anymore.

Looking further ahead, once Huaxia mastered mass production, it would be more than just losing the Huaxia market.

Thus, after a long silence, Lunin asked a very serious question, "Have you done a cost estimate? If this judgment is true, how much would such a piece of equipment approximately cost?"

Schneider shrugged and said, "According to our estimates, the cost should be around thirty to thirty-five billion US Dollars. But, as you know, if all the components are produced domestically within Huaxia Country, the price might need to be discounted by about thirty to forty percent, that is, twenty-one to twenty-eight billion US Dollars.

If Huaxia masters mass production in three to five years..."

Some things didn't need to be spelled out too clearly.

Huaxia's mass-produced products are now quite competitive in the international market.

Not to mention the semiconductor market has its unique aspects. Once Huaxia overcomes the challenges of lithography machines, it will be a double blow to ASML.

Put it this way, if Huaxia's domestically produced chips can suffice for their own use, and they even have the excess capacity to export, it is foreseeable that ASML's current big customers will see a significant drop in sales volume, turnover, and profit.

A reduction in sales also means a reduced demand for upstream equipment. If lithography machines don't sell in the future, profits will naturally decrease.

Lithography machines are also industries that require continuous high investment in research and development. Decreasing profits mean no money for R&D investment, which paints a bleak outlook.

Of course, this might not happen immediately, but whether it's the president or the CEO, they all have long-term vision, isn't this the scenario ASML is going to face in the next decade?

Unless ASML can rapidly iterate products and develop lithography machines that break through the nanometer threshold, gaining an early advantage once again.

But this is clearly almost an impossible task.

If it could be broken, it would have been broken long ago!

Lunin's brain felt chaotic for a moment.

However, the next moment, Schneider spoke again, "Furthermore, the Huaxia people have published another scientific paper that proposes a thought process for chip manufacturing using two-dimensional materials combined with the semi-metal Bismuth, which achieves extremely low resistance and enhanced current transmission, nearly reaching the quantum limit.
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According to the data given in the paper, this material can already be controlled to a thickness of 1 to 3 atoms. Based on our calculations, this paper is also very likely to be realizable. The research institute has started to attempt to replicate these results. But whether this direction can be industrialized is still unclear."

Lunin suddenly felt a bit overwhelmed.

Just yesterday, during an interview, he had told the camera that the Huaxia people couldn't possibly build lithography machines independently from the rest of the world.

This morning, he was still annoyed by the media's out-of-context quotes, and then he heard these two "good pieces of news" in quick succession.

What on earth is happening to this world? Murphy's Law and Moore's Law both decided to give him a hard time?

Really, it's just absurd!

His ability to think nearly stalled in that instant, and after a long while, Lunin turned to the company's chief technology officer with a bizarre expression, asking, "Can you be one hundred percent certain that the Huaxia people have already started these experiments?"

To his surprise, Schneider hesitated for a moment, then shook his head and said, "No."

"Ah?" Lunin suddenly felt as if daylight had returned...

"You might want to take a look at the company's internal technical discussion forum first." Schneider didn't force an explanation but quickly closed the animation he had been showing earlier and entered the forum meant for engineering and technical personnel to exchange ideas on the company's computer.

As expected, it was filled with posts discussing this very topic.

Especially a comprehensive post titled "Discussion on the Feasibility of Huaxia's New Lithography Technology," the related discussions have already exceeded 3,000.

Clicking on it brings up the latest comment.

"Just ran the modified parameters again, unfortunately, the paper doesn't detail the component library, but the computer's results aren't much different from the paper's data, roughly around 20 percent. More detailed parameters are needed for a decisive conclusion."

"Forget it, if this is true, Huaxia people won't possibly provide any more detailed data."

"Is it possible that this is purely theoretical derivation? After all, I've never heard any related news before. You know, such a vast design and engineering project has too many engineering problems to solve, each solution could be patented, but I searched the patent database just now and didn't find any related technical information."

"I too hope this is just a theory, but how do you explain those nearly undeniable data and the control system?"

"Yeah, we've verified all the data repeatedly, and I believe others have done so before us. Ridiculous results simply couldn't be published."

"One possibility is that the news was always suppressed. Huaxia people never planned to protect it through patents, and only now, as the laboratory is about to confirm success, they've published the paper."

"Just a heads up, guys, the author of this paper is a mathematician, the one who proposed the Group Theory Causality Framework. Moreover, the paper has his name and his alone, while normally, the list of authors for such papers is even longer than the abstract, and I find nothing strange in that."

"Putting technical discussions aside, this is definitely the most outrageous thing I've ever seen in my life, without exception."

...

After displaying a part of the discussion, Schneider finally spoke in a low voice, "Do you understand now? Right now we're certain of nothing because all our evidence consists of only two papers. We need more evidence or intelligence before we can make a more accurate judgment."

Lunin fell silent for a while, then said, "Looks like I need to make a call to the United States first."

Schneider nodded in agreement.

...

It wasn't just the semiconductor industry bigwigs in the West who were tormented by Qiao Ze's two papers.

When the news traveled back to Huaxia at the speed of light, many in Huaxia were equally filled with question marks.

A successful joke, it turns out, really couldn't spare their own people.

It's not that the research bigwigs are all night owls, it's mainly because many international peers have no sense of propriety. When they can't figure something out, they don't care about time differences and make international calls to Huaxia, disturbing many people's sweet dreams.

For example, Academician Zhong Chengming of Huaxia Microelectronics Institute, who had been leading the team on lithography machine light source issues, was woken by the ringing telephone early at six in the morning.

"Academician Zhong, sorry to bother you, but the incident was so sudden... We noticed two papers published in Science, one of which is very peculiar. Chen just asked if you could come to the institute to verify it as soon as possible?"

"What paper?"

"Well, it's a new and complete idea for a lithography device."

"Ah? Just for a paper you need such urgency?"

"This... I can't explain... Why don't you come and take a look for yourself."

"Can't explain? How can a paper be inexplicable? Never mind... I'll get up now and tell Chen I'll be at the institute in half an hour."

...

And that was far from the only call of this kind.

But perhaps the most innocent of all were the leaders of Xilin University of Technology.