(FiveNation.com)- According to several people who know the situation, the Biden administration will likely announce new restrictions on Chinese companies access to high-performance computing technologies. This will be the latest in a line of actions to thwart Beijing’s plans to create next-generation weapons and automate massive surveillance systems.
The actions would be among the most substantial ones by the Biden administration to deny China access to cutting-edge semiconductor technology. They might be disclosed as early as this week. They would expand upon a directive issued during the Trump administration that dealt a blow to the Chinese telecom giant Huawei by forbidding businesses from delivering goods produced using American hardware, software, or technology.
According to two sources with knowledge of the plans, several Chinese businesses, government research laboratories, and other organizations are anticipated to suffer limitations similar to those placed on Huawei. In practice, any company that uses American-made technologies would be prohibited from doing business with the administration’s targeted Chinese firms. Which Chinese businesses and laboratories might be impacted is not yet known.
The extent of the so-called “foreign direct product regulation” increase is just one of the expected limits from Washington. The administration is also anticipated to make an effort to restrict the export of state-of-the-art American tools to China’s local semiconductor market.
The United States is moving to separate American and Chinese supply chains on semiconductors and semiconductor technology. Washington also intends to restrict the sale of microchips created in the United States to China’s most advanced supercomputing and data center projects. The cap could substantially impede China’s capacity to make the potent number-crunching technology that is the foundation for advancements in biosciences, artificial intelligence, and missile engineering. Some supercomputers in China have been used to power intrusive monitoring programs that target ethnic minorities. Beijing has used others to simulate nuclear explosions to create new weapons that could surpass American defenses.
The widespread availability of powerful microchips has thwarted recent efforts by the U.S. government to stop technology transfer. Biden administration has touted the extensive use of export limits as a potent instrument to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. It claims that doing so will permanently harm Russia’s defense, technology, energy, and other crucial industries. American officials said they could use the same technique to handle national security issues with other adversaries, including China.
