November 29, 2022
New US Export Controls Need Allied Support
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.
More from CNAS
-
Trump Must Rebalance America’s AI Strategy
The disagreements about AI progress are so fundamental and held with such conviction that they have evoked comparisons to a “religious schism” among technologists....
By Bill Drexel & Ruby Scanlon
-
Guidance for the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris
In September 2024, the French government, in collaboration with civil society partners, invited technical and policy experts to share their opinions on emerging technology iss...
By Janet Egan, Michael Depp, Noah Greene & Caleb Withers
-
Sharper: Trump 2.0
Donald Trump's return to the White House is widely expected to reshape America's global priorities. With personnel choices and policy agendas that mark a significant break fro...
By Charles Horn & Gwendolyn Nowaczyk
-
Team America
Kate Kuzminski, Deputy Director of Studies, and the Director of the Military, Veterans, and Society (MVS) Program at CNAS, joins to discuss President-elect Donald Trump nomina...
By Katherine L. Kuzminski