The Bureau of Industry and Security added a host of Chinese and Russian entities to the Entity List, including top Chinese chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. and leading Chinese artificial intelligence firms, the agency said in a pair of notices released Dec. 15. The new restrictions on the Chinese firms are aimed at “severely restricting” China’s ability to leverage AI, advanced computing and other commercial technologies for its military or human rights abuses, BIS Undersecretary Alan Estevez said. The agency added the Russian entities to the list after it was unable to complete end-use checks. The changes took effect Dec. 16.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security is preparing to add China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. and 35 other Chinese companies to its Entity List as early as this week, Bloomberg reported Dec. 13. YMTC and other companies have been at risk of being added to the Entity List since being placed on the BIS Unverified List in October. Under a new policy, BIS can transfer entities from the UVL to the more restrictive Entity List if they don’t cooperate with a U.S. end-use check within 60 days (see 2210070006). A BIS spokesperson didn’t comment.
China has been more receptive to U.S. end-use checks on Chinese entities as a result of a Commerce Department policy change from October, Bureau of Industry and Security Undersecretary Alan Estevez said this week. Estevez also said he doesn’t expect any significant revisions to BIS’s most recent chip restrictions on China, and warned that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would spark new, strict U.S. export controls that would cause U.S. companies to lose “billions” of dollars in Chinese business.
The Bureau of Industry and Security recently revoked export privileges for seven people after they illegally exported or tried to export controlled items from the U.S., including to Mexico and Russia.
The U.S. needs to provide universities with clearer guidance on what types of research activities they can conduct and share with China, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a report this week. The report, authored by MIT’s China Strategy Group, said U.S. schools face challenges managing outside “pressures” while also “preserving open scientific research,” which risks damaging American research abilities and chilling technology collaboration.
The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls and the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security will hold a webinar Dec. 8 to discuss information technology modernization updates. The webinar will include an overview of recent updates to DDTC’s Defense Export Control and Compliance System, BIS’s “IT Modernization roadmap” and the two agencies’ “collaboration efforts on data sharing and customer experience opportunities.”
The Bureau of Industry and Security’s new Unverified List policies, which allow the agency to move a company from the UVL to the Entity List if it can’t complete an end-use check within 60 days, likely will lead to an uptick in companies added to the Entity List, said Nazak Nikahtar, former acting BIS undersecretary. Nikakhtar said she believes many Chinese companies added to the UVL won’t participate in an end-use check that meets the U.S.’s standards.
Congress should create a new, “permanent” committee in the executive branch tasked with planning sanctions against China under “a range of possible scenarios,” including if it invades Taiwan, a congressional commission said this week. The bipartisan commission also said the Commerce Department should provide Congress with regular enforcement and licensing reports on certain China-related export control decisions and said the administration should create a new list of Chinese firms that should be subject to strict export licensing requirements.
As U.S. chip and technology companies continue to grapple with the U.S’s latest export restrictions on China (see 2211010042), a number of firms fear the controls will hurt their sales and exacerbate uncertainty in the semiconductor sector and the industry’s supply chains. In filings with the Securities & Exchange Commission this month, at least one firm projected revenue losses while others said they are still assessing the impact of the complex controls and whether they can secure export licenses.
U.S. chip companies may need to wait as long as nine months before the U.S. can come to an agreement with allies on multilateral China chip controls, Bloomberg reported Nov. 3. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, speaking last week to Lam Research, KLA and other chip companies, said the U.S. is working on an agreement with the Netherlands and Japan, but such a deal could take six to nine months, the report said.