The US will block the sale of cutting-edge chip manufacturing equipment to China

The Biden administration announced Monday that it has imposed a new set of export controls on China, restricting the sale of cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing equipment and high-bandwidth computer memory to the communist nation.

The new rules prohibit the sale of 24 different types of equipment and three different software tools, all of which are used to produce what are known as “advanced node” semiconductors, the fastest and most efficient chips on the market.

The export controls, announced by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, also restrict the transfer of high-bandwidth memory products, which advanced node semiconductors need to maximize their performance in high-intensity applications, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

At the same time, the government added 140 companies, primarily in China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry, to a list of entities with which American companies and individuals are prohibited from doing business. Generally, exporting certain technologies to companies on the list requires a license from the federal government.

Blocking military development

The latest round of sanctions is specifically aimed at preventing China from manufacturing advanced semiconductors on its own, for fear that it will then incorporate AI into new military equipment and advanced tools of social control.

“Advanced AI models could be used for rapid response scenarios on the battlefield; reducing the barrier to developing cyber weapons or chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons; and using facial and voice recognition to repress and surveil minorities and political dissidents,” the department said in a statement announcing the sanctions.

“This action is the culmination of the Biden-Harris Administration’s targeted approach, in concert with our allies and partners, to impair the ability [de China] “indigenous the production of advanced technologies that represent a risk to our national security,” said US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo in a statement.

“The United States has taken significant steps to protect our technology from being used by our adversaries in ways that threaten our national security,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in the same statement. “As technology evolves and our adversaries seek new ways to evade restrictions, we will continue to work with our allies and partners to proactively and aggressively safeguard our world-leading technologies and expertise from being used to undermine our national security.” ”.

China responds

In a statement sent to VOA, the Chinese Embassy in Washington condemned the sanctions.

“China firmly opposes the latest US control measures on semiconductor exports. The measure is a typical economic coercion and a non-commercial practice,” the embassy said.

The embassy accused the United States of “exaggerating” the idea of ​​national security, abusing export control rules and “harassment.”

“The semiconductor industry is highly globalized,” the statement said. “The abuse of regulatory measures by the United States seriously hinders normal economic and trade exchanges between countries, undermines market rules and the international economic and trade order, and poses a serious threat to the stability of industrial and supply chains. global supply. “The global semiconductor industry, including US companies, has been severely affected.”

The statement concludes with the promise that “China will take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”

Significant impact

Stephen Ezell, vice president of global innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told VOA that the new sanctions will likely do real damage to China’s effort to create a world-class domestic chip manufacturing industry.

In an email exchange with VOA, Ezell said that manufacturing semiconductors is “perhaps the most complex engineering task humanity undertakes,” and that simply building the machinery to make them requires a wide range of inputs, access to many of which the United States can significantly restrict.

“Those tools…rely on literally dozens of thousands of inputs and components, many of them provided by specialized suppliers around the world,” Ezell wrote. “If Chinese toolmakers don’t have easy access to them, their task of recreating a fully indigenous supply chain becomes much more difficult and expensive.”

Ezell said the loss of market share in China will hurt U.S. manufacturers who can’t sell in the country, but noted that China’s goal has been to eliminate its dependence on foreign chips anyway, which would produce the same result. .

“The way to deal with the challenge is for the United States (and its like-minded allies) to stimulate the growth of semiconductor industries in places like India or Malaysia, so that sales lost in China can be recovered elsewhere. places, because we are expanding semiconductor production in like-minded nations,” Ezell said.

He added that it is important for the United States to partner with other major semiconductor and equipment manufacturing nations to institute similar policies toward China.

Advanced chips

The main target of the new US export controls is so-called “advanced node” chips and the equipment used to make them. The distinguishing factor of advanced node chips is the size of the transistors used in their manufacture.

Some transistors can be up to three nanometers (three billionths of a meter) long. The smaller the individual transistors, the more they can be placed on a single chip, making them better at processing information and more power efficient.

For advanced node chips to perform at their full potential, they must be combined with high-bandwidth computer memory, which can provide high-speed access to large amounts of data.

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