South Korea’s Strategic Tech State

Wednesday, December 31, 2025
white-and-black paper lanterns during daytime

South Korea occupies a distinctive position in Asia’s technology landscape. Neither a Silicon Valley–style free market nor a fully state-directed system, the country has refined a hybrid model in which government capacity, industrial champions and digital platforms reinforce one another. At the heart of this model lies a conviction that technology infrastructure is not merely an economic sector, but a core instrument of national competitiveness.

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The EU Chips Act

Sunday, December 28, 2025
Four friends climbing over a wooden fence outdoors

Semiconductors have become the fault line of modern geopolitics. The United States and China are investing aggressively in domestic chip production, treating semiconductors not as consumer goods but as strategic infrastructure. Europe, by contrast, spent decades optimising research while outsourcing large-scale manufacturing — until recent crises exposed how fragile that model had become.

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Netherlands: The High-Tech Precision Player

Friday, November 28, 2025
green grass field near body of water during sunset

The Netherlands is not a numerical AI superpower — but it is an influential one. While other countries talk big, the Dutch build the components that keep the global system running. No hype cycles, no billion-dollar theatrics: the strength of the Netherlands lies in precision, infrastructure and reliability.

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The Companies That Built Brainport: Inside Europe’s Most Advanced Tech Ecosystem

Sunday, November 23, 2025
people standing inside city building

When people talk about cutting-edge technology, they often think of the giants that dominate software and AI — Google, Apple, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI. But the foundations of global innovation increasingly rely on something far more complex, far more fragile and far harder to replicate: deep hardware ecosystems.

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A Different Kind of Valley: Why Brainport Thrives Without Copying Silicon Valley

Sunday, November 23, 2025

Silicon Valley is often treated as the ultimate template for innovation — the place where software giants were born, where venture capital became a cultural force and where new technologies could move from idea to global impact within a single product cycle. So when Europe looks for its own hubs of innovation, the comparison is inevitable: Is there a European Silicon Valley?

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ASML and the Quiet Powerhouse of European Innovation

Saturday, November 8, 2025

In the sprawling global chip race, the world tends to focus on the big names: Taiwan’s foundries, American fabless chip-firms, Chinese challengers. But tucked away in the Dutch city of Veldhoven sits a company quietly rewriting the rules: ASML. While many talk about Europe’s lag in semiconductor manufacturing, ASML is living proof that Europe still holds world-beating innovation — not by chasing the same paths as others, but by building the tools that everyone else needs.

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About us

Altair Media Asia explores the forces shaping Asia’s economic, geopolitical and societal transformations. Through independent analysis and commentary, we examine how markets, technologies, institutions and cultures shape the region’s evolving role in the global order.
📍 Based in The Netherlands – with contributors across Asia.
✉️ Contact: info@altairmedia.eu