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ALBANY - As U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer was at Albany Nanotech on Monday celebrating the passage of the $52 billion CHIPS Act, the elephant in the room was poised behind him encased in glass and bathed in yellow light - an ultra-violet lithography machine.

The massive spending bill, which Congress has sent to President Joe Biden for his signature, is designed to jump-start the domestic computer chip manufacturing sector, providing billions of dollars in incentives to computer chip companies to build new factories in the U.S., which has been losing market share in recent decades to the rest of the world, especially China. The bill would also set aside $11 billion to create a national chip manufacturing lab, which could have significant operations in Albany.

But the global race for chip dominance could hinge on the $150 million extreme ultra-violet lithography machine that Schumer was standing in front of Monday.

The machine, which is about the size of city bus, is made by a Dutch company called ASML. And it holds the key to making today's most advanced chips, capable of etching components onto a chip as small as 7 nanometers.

And while the U.S. is doing its best to prevent China from obtaining one of these EUV machines, it was recently discovered that China has indeed started making such cutting edge chips, perhaps after stealing the technology from Taiwan or developing new manufacturing tricks to get there. 

Either way, passage of the CHIPS Act couldn't come soon enough, Schumer said Monday when asked about China's new advances in chip tech, which could someday surpass the U.S.

"If they become a leader in chips, it will hurt both our national security and our economic security, they will have a vice-grip on it," Schumer said. "So we have to get ahead of China."

Albany Nanotech is in a unique position because IBM has one of ASML's EUV machines used in research. There are no such EUV machines used in volume commercial production in the U.S. currently, although the CHIPS Act will change that quickly.

Schumer said the key to stopping China from winning the chips race is two fold:  stop them from obtaining tech like EUV technology, and then growing the U.S. chip industry so that the world comes to the U.S. for chips first.

"Dollar-for-dollar, we do better than the Chinese. Person-for-person, we do better than the Chinese," Schumer said. "We will stay ahead of China once this bill is signed."

Larry Rulison has been a reporter for the Albany Times Union since 2005. Larry's reporting for the Times Union has won several awards for business and investigative journalism from the New York State Associated Press Association and the New York News Publishers Association. Contact him at 518-454-5504 or lrulison@timesunion.com.