I know nothing about Intel's internal organization.

There were several different light source ideas tried. Some at US national laboratories. Tin plasma was known to work but it left so much debris that it gummed up the optics so it was forgotten for a while. The key turned out to be tin microdroplets.

https://www.optica-opn.org/home/articles/volume_29/march_201...

ASML and Intel are two completely different companies. ASML makes lithography machines which is one of the many steps in producing a chip. ASML machines are used by all chip manufacturers. The challenge for chip manufacturers like Intel, but also tsmc, Samsung among others, is to optimize the entire production process. And that has been / is not easy with a lithography step (EUV) which is so drastically different then what the industry has been using before. One of the challenging choices for chip manufacturers was to drastically change the process and implement EUV or to go self-aligned quadratic patterning. The latter, if you take a simplistic view, can be seen as an evolution on existing processes. We know see that those companies who went aggressively into EUV are having an edge on their competitors.

When they say “microdroplets” (I may be out of date here) they mean firing lasers at falling drops of molten tin and then capturing the energy that the tin gives off.

Like anything, some of their PHDs were like “no that’s probably not going to work because xyz” and they trusted said PHDs.

It’s just science. It’s hard to predict.

I think it's more that they didn't try ('till now) 'cause they thought ASML's machines just weren't ready for prime time. TSMC bought ASML's bleeding edge EUV machines thinking they could make it work eventually, and they did. Intel may catch up very quickly now.