The House Select Committee on China announced last week it has begun investigating Georgia Institute of Technology’s research collaboration with China’s Tianjin University, which has “significant ties” to China's military and has been on the Commerce Department’s Entity List since 2020 (see 2012180039).
China on May 7 voiced its opposition to the U.S. reportedly revoking the export licenses that Intel and Qualcomm use to sell certain semiconductors to Huawei (see 2405070081). The Ministry of Commerce said the move violates World Trade Organization commitments, according to an unofficial translation.
The Bureau of Industry and Security needs more help from companies to stop Russia from acquiring export controlled semiconductors and other microelectronics, Matthew Axelrod, the agency’s top export enforcement official, said May 8 during a semiconductor summit hosted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. The joint Commerce Department-DOJ Disruptive Technology Strike Force has helped the government pool resources to investigate and prosecute export control violations, “but even this impactful coordinated effort across government enforcement agencies is, by itself, insufficient to meet the national security moment we’re facing,” Axelrod said. “[F]rankly, we need everyone to do more.”
The Biden administration, which announced in August 2023 that it would develop restrictions on outbound investment in China (see 2308090066), expects to finalize the new regulations by the end of calendar year 2024, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said May 8.
The Commerce Department has revoked export licenses used by Intel and Qualcomm to sell certain semiconductors to Huawei, the Financial Times reported May 7. The report said the companies used the licenses to sell chips for Huawei’s laptops and mobile phones. A Commerce spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment but told the Financial Times that the agency “continuously” assesses its export controls, and “as part of this process, as we have done in the past, we sometimes revoke export licenses.”
The U.S. will struggle to compete technologically with China unless it continues to loosen trade barriers around sensitive technologies for a broader range of allies outside just the U.K. and Australia, Mike Gallagher, a former member of Congress, said this week.
Aggressive new U.S. export controls on advanced computing chips and the equipment to manufacture them are having unintended side effects and may be causing more harm than good for Western companies, a Brussels-based think-tank said.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., urged the Commerce Department last week to immediately revoke all export licenses to China’s Huawei, saying the Bureau of Industry and Security is allowing a foreign adversary's company to obtain too much advanced U.S. technology.
The Commerce Department should start preparing export controls for dual-use artificial intelligence models, which could prevent those models from being used to make biosecurity weapons or skirt U.S. export restrictions on advanced semiconductors, researchers told the agency in comments released this month. But technology companies and industry groups warned the U.S. against overbroad controls, which they said could hurt American AI innovation.
Russia is still able to buy semiconductors for its war effort -- especially from China -- despite Western sanctions and export controls, a semiconductor policy researcher said in a new report this month. Although the restrictions are forcing Russia to pay almost double for some chips and require Russian supply chain managers to constantly find new supply lines, the report said Chinese suppliers are increasingly filling the market gap left by companies in the U.S. and elsewhere who are adhering to the export restrictions.