The Unintended Diplomat of Light

I travelled to Eindhoven for a conversation about chips. Not to analyse schematics or count transistors, but to understand what technology truly represents today. In a world where geopolitical power is increasingly exercised through machines, the chip is no longer a technical object — it has become a strategic crossroads.

The interview with Professor Martijn Heck therefore did not begin with a prepared list of questions. That list remained closed. Instead, the conversation unfolded organically, revealing how difficult it has become to maintain perspective. Chips now touch energy systems, security, data flows, defence, education and sovereignty all at once. Anyone attempting to impose order quickly discovers how fragmented the landscape has become.

Halfway through the conversation, Heck raised a fair question: whether I sufficiently understood the technology itself. It was not a test, nor a correction, but a concern. Because speaking about chips without understanding their physics means missing the core. Yet precisely in that moment it became clear what this interview was really about — not the chip itself, but Europe’s position in a world where the United States speaks loudly and China builds quietly.

“Electrons are like a crowd trying to run through a narrow corridor — they collide, generate heat and slow each other down. Photons move through open space. They don’t interact, they don’t heat up and they travel at the speed of light.”

Prof. Dr. Martijn Heck
Professor of Photonic Integration — Eindhoven University of Technology

Heck is not an AI expert. He stresses this himself. His domain is materials, wavelengths and physical limits. For nearly three decades, his work has focused on a single fundamental question: how can information be transported faster, cleaner and more efficiently through our systems?

His academic path runs through Eindhoven, Denmark and the United States. He worked on technologies long before they became politically relevant. At a time when ASML was still largely invisible, he was already there — not driven by strategy, but by curiosity. Building technology, measuring it, improving it. That mindset has never left him.

And yet today, his position has become paradoxical. Because while he sees himself as an engineer, his work has become inseparable from geopolitics.

“At the end of the day, I’m not a politician. I’m an engineer trying to understand how nature behaves at the scale of a nanometre. But I’m very aware that what we build here reaches far beyond this laboratory.”

Prof. Dr. Martijn Heck
Professor of Photonic Integration — Eindhoven University of Technology

At the heart of his research lies photonics: chips that operate not with electrons, but with light. Instead of electrical currents, photons are used to transport data. The distinction may sound technical, but its implications are strategic.

Electronic chips increasingly suffer from heat, resistance and energy loss. Photons do not carry mass or electrical charge. They do not collide. They do not slow one another down. And according to Heck, this physical reality defines the next phase of digital infrastructure.

Not because photonics is merely “faster”, but because it remains scalable where electronics reaches its physical limits.

“We are approaching the fundamental limits of what electricity can do. The next chapter of computing will not be written in current, but in light.”

Prof. Dr. Martijn Heck
Professor of Photonic Integration — Eindhoven University of Technology

This transition is not optional. It is becoming unavoidable — particularly as artificial intelligence expands at an unprecedented pace. One paradox repeatedly surfaced during the conversation: chips may become vastly more efficient, yet their overall usage increases even faster.

Here, technology collides directly with energy policy.

“We may make chips 95 percent more efficient, but we end up using them twenty times more. Without fundamentally changing the architecture of data transport through photonics, AI will overwhelm our energy infrastructure.”

Prof. Dr. Martijn Heck
Professor of Photonic Integration — Eindhoven University of Technology

According to Heck, this issue remains largely invisible in public debate. In the Netherlands and across Europe, discussions focus on heat pumps, electric vehicles and grid congestion — while the energy demand of digital infrastructure grows quietly in the background. Data centres, AI models and global networks consume power continuously.

Photonics, in this sense, is not an elegant innovation. It is a prerequisite — the silent condition that keeps the entire system from breaking down.

Yet innovation rarely follows political schedules. While Europe drafts strategies, unexpected breakthroughs emerge elsewhere. Heck refers to Google’s Taara chip, capable of transmitting data wirelessly through light across kilometres — without fibre.

“Innovation does not conform to five-year plans. It often emerges precisely where no one was looking.”

Prof. Dr. Martijn Heck
Professor of Photonic Integration — Eindhoven University of Technology

This reality exposes a structural European weakness. The knowledge exists here. The laboratories exist here. Students from all over the world come to Eindhoven. But between discovery and global scale lies a persistent gap.

“In Eindhoven we design the future, in the United States it gets financed and in Asia it gets scaled. The problem isn’t knowledge — it’s control over the path from lab to market.”

Prof. Dr. Martijn Heck
Professor of Photonic Integration — Eindhoven University of Technology

That lack of coordination also underpins his criticism of the European Chips Act. Not because investment is misguided, but because something essential is missing.

“You can invest billions in factories, but if you don’t invest in people and education, you don’t build an industry — you build a museum. We have a Chips Act, but no Chips Education Act.”

Prof. Dr. Martijn Heck
Professor of Photonic Integration — Eindhoven University of Technology

His words echo broader European warnings. Mario Draghi recently described Europe’s technological position as an existential challenge. Former ASML CEO Peter Wennink warned that countries which stop being makers eventually lose their autonomy.

Within this tension, Heck has become — unintentionally — a diplomat. Not through politics, but through physics. Because those who control technologies others depend on wield influence without ever needing to claim it.

“Strategic autonomy doesn’t mean doing everything yourself. It means owning something the rest of the world cannot do without.”

Prof. Dr. Martijn Heck
Professor of Photonic Integration — Eindhoven University of Technology

As the conversation ends, I walk through the university corridors. Students sit at tables, laptops open, engaged in quiet discussion. The atmosphere is focused, almost calm. No rhetoric. No urgency. Only concentration.

Here, power is not being pursued. Responsibility is.

“What we’re building here isn’t about today. It’s about the world these students will inherit — and what role Europe will still play in it.”

Prof. Dr. Martijn Heck
Professor of Photonic Integration — Eindhoven University of Technology

Perhaps that is the central insight of the conversation. Europe’s future will not be decided by slogans or summits, but in silence — in laboratories, in classrooms and in the people willing to build without shouting.

And in that sense, the light Professor Heck works with is not a metaphor — but a direction.