December 29, 2023

How to Stop Our High-Tech Equipment From Arming Russia and China

The U.S. government’s efforts to stop Russia and China from using American equipment to boost their defense sectors have resulted in tough rules — but leaky enforcement. As a result, American-made tools keep turning up in Russian missile factories and in Huawei’s supply chain. With war in Europe and China threatening its neighbors, that’s just not good enough.

Facing a revanchist Russia and adversarial China, we need to revitalize these techniques, or else our tools will continue to be used to build their militaries.

The United States and its allies make the most advanced tools for both precision metalworking and semiconductor manufacturing. With international tensions rising, the United States and its allies have been right to try to prohibit adversaries from using these tools to manufacture weapons that undermine America’s military edge. In October 2022, the United States imposed restrictions on American firms selling and servicing equipment to manufacture chips below the 14-nanometer level, which covers chips necessary for building supercomputers and training frontier artificial intelligence models, aiming to limit China’s access to the chip technology used to train A.I. systems for military use. And when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the United States and its allies tightened sales of cutting-edge machine tools to Russia to prevent them from being used for military purposes.

Read the full article from The New York Times.

  • Podcast
    • May 16, 2025
    What Ukraine and Russia are Negotiating in Turkey

    Direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul this week – the first since March 2022 – have got off to a shaky start. Putin’s no-show meant President Zelenskyy remained ...

    By Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Jim Townsend

  • Video
    • May 10, 2025
    Putin Desperate to Maintain Fractured Relationship with Trump | Jim Townsend

    Trump could push Putin further to "get on board" with a 30 day ceasefire as Russia grow more keen grow a relationship with the US, says Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for...

    By Jim Townsend

  • Podcast
    • April 30, 2025
    Ukraine Negotiates for Its Future

    There’s been a flurry of activity on the Ukraine front this week. Over the weekend, Donald Trump briefly met with Zelensky in Rome during ceremonies for Pope Francis’ funeral....

    By Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Jim Townsend

    • Book
    • April 30, 2025
    Human, Machine, War: How the Mind-Tech Nexus Will Win Future Wars

    Air University Press has published Strategic Multilayer Assessment’s (SMA) latest book, Human, Machine, War: How the Mind-Tech Nexus Will Win Future Wars. Forewords by General...

    By Samuel Bendett & Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan

View All Reports View All Articles & Multimedia