Earlier this week, the U.S. and the Netherlands announced summer plans to add more restrictions to the sale of chip-making equipment to China, part of the to nations’ continuing effort to prevent their technology from being used to strengthen China’s military.
While the Dutch are planning to curb certain equipment from national champion ASML and other companies, the U.S. is expected to go one step further and use its long reach to withhold even more Dutch equipment from specific Chinese fabs.The Dutch government and ASML declined to comment, as did the U.S. Commerce Department, which oversees export controls.The U.S. in October imposed export restrictions on shipments of American chipmaking tools to China from U.S. companies like Lam Research and Applied Materials on national security grounds, and lobbied other countries with key suppliers to adopt similar curbs.
American officials look to be targeting the chips that power the rapidly developing artificial intelligence (AI) technology, looking at further export restrictions to China.
“There will likely be more attempts coming from Washington to target the development in China of some types of applications, and generative AI could be in the crosshairs in the coming year,” Paul Triolo, the technology policy lead at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge, told CNBC.It comes “as the Biden administration determines which technologies could benefit both China’s military modernization, and which could also boost Chinese companies’ ability to make breakthroughs in generative AI,” he added.Generative AI relates to applications such as ChatGPT which are able to generate content when prompted by users.
Chip-makers are already feeling the impact of the decision.
Shares of Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices both fell more than 2% in early trading after The Wall Street Journal reported the federal government is weighing new restrictions on exports of sophisticated chips used in artificial intelligence computing to China.Shares of Nvidia closed down 1.8% Wednesday. AMD shares pared back earlier losses to trade slightly negative by the end of the day.The export restrictions under consideration would be imposed by the Commerce Department and would come after the U.S. government already limited the computing power of chips made for Chinese use. Nvidia and AMD had been impacted by the prior limitation.
Meanwhile, members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party have implored Biden not to renew a U.S.-China science and technology cooperation agreement.
We are concerned that the [People’s Republic of China] has previously leveraged the [Science and Technology Agreement] to advance its military objectives and will continue to do so,” the committee members wrote in a Tuesday letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Reports suggest that research partnerships organized under the STA could have developed technologies that would later be used against the United States.”The letter’s signatories – including House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) – suggest it’s no coincidence that five years before Beijing sent a spy balloon through US airspace, American scientists helped China debut similar technology for meteorological research as part of the agreement.“In 2018, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) organized a project with China’s Meteorological Administration – under the STA – to launch instrumented balloons to study the atmosphere,” the letter read.“As you know, a few years later, the PRC used similar balloon technology to surveil US military sites on US territory – a clear violation of our sovereignty.”
Given that China’s priorities tend to be Biden’s priorities, that might be a big ask.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY