theres like 3 EUV machines made over a 3 year period

made by one company (ASML)

if you aren't Intel, TSMC or Samsung you aint getting one

I think the parent is implying that someone in Vietnam or Kazakhstan could just buy the finished product and drive across the border.

So the restriction is effectively an inconvenient tax.

how does that help if the finished product has been made to detect LLM workloads in hardware and slow down?

Assuming the detection is perfectly implemented, it wouldn't.