The fate of the world economy may depend on what happens to a company most Americans have never heard of
, making the company highly valuable in the eyes of government entities.
"When you have a very complex, very sophisticated, and very expensive technology where barriers to entry are very high — I mean, building a fab plant is in the billions — you can't just decide tomorrow, 'Well, I'm going to go into that business,'" he said."It's not like making tea."Ann Wang/Reuters Dylan Patel, a chief analyst at the semiconductor research and consulting firm SemiAnalysis, pointed to the Dutch company ASML as an example: ASML produces high-end chipmaking equipment, but one of the technologies for which it's best known was invented in the US National Laboratories.