November 29, 2022

New US Export Controls Need Allied Support

By Hannah Kelley

While national security concerns triggered the October 7 U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) export control rule, human rights were not an afterthought.

The new U.S. rule targets exports of advanced node chips and supercomputers to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as well as U.S. persons and equipment that support Chinese development and production. This goes beyond previous measures that restricted commercial chips to Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and added a number of its affiliates to the U.S. entity list, in part due to its connection to PRC surveillance efforts.

Japan and the Netherlands must enact similar advanced chip controls to ensure they do not enable the very practices they denounce.

Analysts have focused on how the new controls will interrupt Chinese defense technology development, including conventional weapons, weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), hypersonic weapons, and cognitive electronic warfare capabilities. Less discussed is how they will curb China’s ongoing human rights violations by cutting off key inputs necessary to maintain its surveillance state.

In addition to hard defense technologies, advanced chips power the artificial intelligence (AI) systems and supercomputers that allow China to process massive amounts of personal data from a range of inputs – including phone trackers, biometric markers, and e-commerce and travel records – to monitor and chart minority or dissident targets across the country.

Read the full article from The Diplomat.

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