Honestly I thought the same, but after watching a couple of videos on how EUV actually works, and what ASML (and the 1,200 other specialized companies that feed into its supply chain) built..

I can understand why you can't just take one apart and copy it.

There's (apparently) 4 decades of accumulated cutting edge scientific research that has gone into these machines.

I suspect the machinery, process and human expertise required to simply produce the parts required for these machines is the real moat (oh and I guess the US-led export controls too).

The build tolerances for components are incredible. There are 11 primary mirrors in an EUV machine, each one has something like 100 coats of ultra-pure materials that are precisely deposited in picometer-thick layers with tolerances in the nanometers, across a 1-meter wide curved surface.

Then you have to position the mirrors perfectly inside the machine, again with tolerances in the nanometers.

So even if you know what you need to do, having the equipment and expertise to do it is a different thing.

And that's just one part of the 100,000+ parts that make up an EUV machine.