West Sanctions Russia but Fears Game-Changing Attack

When President Joe Biden stood in front of the world’s media in the East Room of the White House on Thursday (Friday AEDT), he said what every major leader had been thinking as they saw Russian bombs exploding in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.

“There is no doubt that when a major nuclear power attacks and invades another country that the world is going to respond,” Biden said.

So far, the US and its allies have reacted to Russia’s pounding of the Ukraine by shutting off trillion of dollars worth of assets controlled by Russia’s government, its 10 biggest banks and largest state-owned enterprises. US President Joe Biden delivers his first remarks since Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine, in the White House on Thursday.

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Martijn Rasser, a director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Centre for a New American Security, says the sanctions mean companies such as the world’s largest chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, will have to stop selling products to Russia because it uses US inputs.

“The main concern with Russia is that it has some leverage with raw materials such as titanium – Boeing is a big customer of Russian titanium – but I would say on the whole the US and its allies have the upper hand because of how far-reaching these export controls are,” he says. “So if you’re looking to inflict pain, short of military action, you know, this is what you would do. The high-tech sector is going to be hit very hard.”

Read the full story and more from The Australian Financial Review.