Commerce

Bloomberg reports that the Commerce Department’s Deputy Secretary recently flew to the Netherlands to lobby the Dutch technology company ASML from selling advanced chipmaking equipment to China. That trip raises the question – if the U.S. government is lobbying other nations to curb exports of sensitive technologies, why isn’t the Commerce Department using its power to put export controls on certain American chipmaking technologies bound for China? ASML is one of the world’s most important companies in the chipmaking ecosystem. As China Tech Threat noted in its white paper on semiconductor export control policies, “only ASML produces extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography equipment, which is necessary to manufacture state-of-the-art 5 nm chips.” Will Hunt, Saif Kahn (now at the National Security… Read More