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 ban the sale of 24 different kinds 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, mostly in China’s domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry, to a list of entities that U.S. firms and individuals are restricted from doing business with. In general, 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 fabricating advanced semiconductors on its own, out of concern that it would then incorporate AI into new military hardware and advanced tools of social control.
“Advanced AI models could be used for rapid response scenarios on the battlefield; lowering the barrier to develop cyberweapons or chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons; and utilizing facial and voice recognition to repress and surveil minorities and political dissidents,” the department said in a release 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 [China’s] ability to indigenize the production of advanced technologies that pose a risk to our national security,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said 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 know-how so they aren’t used to undermine our national security.”
China responds
In a statement sent to VOA, the Chinese Embassy in Washington condemned the sanctions.
“China strongly opposes the U.S.' latest control measures on semiconductor export. The move is a typical economic coercion and non-market practice,” the embassy said.
The embassy accused the United States of “overstretching” the idea of national security, abusing export control rules and “bullying.”
“The semiconductor industry is highly globalized,” the statement said. “The US' abuse of regulatory measures severely hinders normal economic and trade exchanges among countries, undermines market rules and the international economic and trade order, and poses a serious threat to the stability of the global industrial and supply chains. The global semiconductor industry, including US companies, has been severely affected.”
The statement concluded with the promise that, “China will take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”
Significant impact
Stephen Ezell, vice president for global innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told VOA that the new sanctions are likely to 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 manufacture them requires a vast array of inputs, access to many of which the U.S. can meaningfully restrict.
“Those tools … depend on literally dozens of thousands of inputs and components, many provided by specialized suppliers from across the world,” Ezell wrote. “If Chinese toolmakers don’t have ready access to these, it makes their task of recreating a wholly indigenous supply chain that much more difficult and expensive.”
Ezell said the loss of market share in China will hurt U.S. manufacturers unable to sell into the country, but he pointed out 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 like-minded allies) to stimulate the growth of semiconductor industries in places like India or Malaysia, so sales that are lost in China can be recaptured elsewhere, because we’re expanding semiconductor production in like-minded nations,” Ezell said.
He added that it is important that the U.S. team up with other major semiconductor manufacturing and equipment-making nations to institute similar policies toward China.
Advanced chips
The primary target of the new U.S. export controls are so-called “advanced node” chips and the equipment used to manufacture them. Advanced node chips’ distinguishing factor is the size of the transistors used in their manufacture.
Some transistors can be as small as three nanometers — three one-billionths of a meter — in length. The smaller the individual transistors are, means more of them can be placed on a single chip, making them better at processing information, and more energy efficient.
For advanced node chips to operate at their full potential, they need to be paired with high-bandwidth computer memory, which can provide high-speed access to vast amounts of data.
