Why steal if money is no object? If there truly was enough motivation in whatever circles these decisions get made in, they could just offer all the top folks at ASML an eight figure or nine figure salary package. The fact that this hasn't happened yet suggests that it's not as critical as it's made to sound like, or at least those key decision makers don't believe so.
Ironically, the very thing that everyone assumes will allow China to dominate appears to be hamstringing them: politics.
China can say they have a priority on domestic semiconductor production, and they can throw obscene amounts of money at the problem.
But ultimately, something that takes 10+ years to develop isn't appetizing for China's current political climate. It needs to be the best, yesterday.
Consequently, they'll continue throwing money at whoever promises results next year, and starving whoever says it can't be done but offers a realistic plan to eventual dominance.
Capitalism sucks in many ways, but decentralized command economies (national government commands, local supplies) are about the worst of all possible worlds for high knowledge, long lead time, heavy research industries.
Which is why you saw the Soviets do pretty well at heavy industry, but not so well at computers.
>national government commands, local supplies are about the worst of all possible worlds for high knowledge, long lead time, heavy research industries
Yet DARPA and company are behind like half of modern IT technology.
>Which is why you saw the Soviets do pretty well at heavy industry, but not so well at computers
Soviets were fairly behind the US in electronics to begin with, and they had massive production problems everywhere, including heavy industry(turns out that setting every price and production quota from Moscow wasn't really effective).
It's just that heavy industry was easier.
