Biden takes a parting swing at China’s chip industry ahead of Trump’s 2nd term

Donald Trump has described China as the “main threat” to the US AI industry.

The US announced on Monday another round of export controls on China’s semiconductor industry, multiple outlets reported, weeks ahead of Donald Trump’s second term.

Washington plans to restrict exports to 140 Chinese companies, including the chip-equipment heavyweight Naura Technology Group, to curb China’s growing capabilities in artificial intelligence and defense technology.

It is the third crackdown the US has initiated on China’s chipmaking industry since October 2022. The move is set to also stop the export of advanced high-bandwidth memory, a key component in the development of AI chips in China.

The chip manufacturers Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. and Huawei are also on the list of 140 companies.

“They’re the strongest controls ever enacted by the US to degrade the People’s Republic of China’s ability to make the most advanced chips that they’re using in their military modernization,” Gina Raimondo, the US’s commerce secretary, told reporters from the Financial Times, The New York Times, and others on Sunday.

The US has long been embroiled in a technological race against China, which developing AI and military tech at pace.

The Biden administration’s latest sanctions are partly driven by national security concerns that China’s access to high-quality chips could allow it to bolster its military applications, especially through the use of AI.

Last month, Reuters reported that researchers in China affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army had used Meta’s open-source AI model Llama to develop an AI tool that could be applied to military use cases.

While this latest wave of measures is from the Biden administration, Beijing reportedly anticipates further sanctions from Trump. China has been attempting to stockpile chips from the US in recent months, with purchases reaching $1.11 billion in October, an analysis of customs data from the South China Morning Post found.

Previous comments from Trump suggest he’s aligned with the Biden administration when it comes to thwarting China’s AI growth. In a June interview with the social-media personality Logan Paul, Trump billed China as the “main threat” to the US AI industry. “We have to be at the forefront,” he said.

There are still some internal disagreements about the approach to restricting Huawei chip-production facilities, the Financial Times said. Some of the Chinese tech giant’s chip-production plants were not included on the list, with one person close to the discussions telling the FT that they were not in operation, so it’s not clear whether they would be used for the production of advanced chips.

Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, said at a press conference earlier this month, “China is firmly opposed to the US overstretching the concept of national security, abusing export control measures, and making malicious attempts to block and suppress China.”

The US Department of Commerce didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from B-17 made outside normal working hours.