Biden Administration Blacklists 21 China-Based AI Chipmakers

President Joe Biden (C) greets workers as he tours the TSMC Semiconductor Manufacturing Facility in Phoenix on Dec. 6, 2022. Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

The Biden administration is adding 22 Chinese chipmakers to a trade blacklist, severely restricting the companies’ access to U.S. technology.

The Commerce Department added Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC) and 21 “major” Chinese entities working in the domain of artificial intelligence chips to the blacklist.

YMTC was added to the list over concerns it could divert U.S. technology to previously blacklisted Chinese tech giants including Huawei and Hikvision. YMTC’s suppliers are now banned from shipping U.S. goods to the company without a difficult-to-obtain license.

The administration will take a more aggressive approach to the other 21 entities, including Cambricon Technologies and state-owned China Electronics Technology Group (CETC), effectively blocking them from accessing technology made anywhere in the world with U.S. equipment.

The announcement was made by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), which oversees issues of national security and technology within the department.

Such a maneuver was necessary, the administration said, due to the companies’ close ties with China’s communist regime and other entities supporting the development of China’s military.

Under Secretary of Commerce Alan Estevez linked the move to the administration’s unprecedented decision in October to bar exports to China of advanced semiconductors made with U.S. research, including by partner nations.

“Today we are building on the actions we took in October to protect U.S. national security by severely restricting the PRC’s ability to leverage artificial intelligence, advanced computing, and other powerful, commercially available technologies for military modernization and human rights abuses,” Estevez said in a statement (pdf), using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China, the official name of the communist country.

Choking China’s Military Development

Advanced semiconductor chips are central to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) effort to rapidly expand and modernize its military, including its hypersonic and nuclear arsenals.

Many of China’s most high-tech military capabilities were built using stolen or co-opted U.S. technologies, and lawmakers have increasingly warned that the regime’s policy of military-civil fusion, in which barriers between military and civilian sectors are intentionally destroyed, allows advanced chips from the United States to fuel China’s military, even if they were obtained for apparently commercial purposes.

“Today’s rules further the Biden Administration’s efforts to deny the PRC access to advanced technologies for military modernization and human rights abuses,” Assistant Secretary of Commerce Thea Rozman Kendler said.

“Following on BIS’s advanced computing and semiconductor manufacturing equipment rule of October 7, today’s additions to the Entity List further our efforts to decisively restrict access to advanced technologies in furtherance of U.S. national security requirements.”

The Commerce Department also targeted nine Chinese entities for supporting China’s military modernization and added one surveillance camera manufacturer for participating in “China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-tech surveillance against Uyghurs.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) joined the bipartisan celebration of the announcement with a statement denouncing the companies’ role in benefiting China’s military.

“YMTC poses an immediate threat to our national security, so the Biden Administration needed to act swiftly to prevent YMTC from gaining even an inch of a military or economic advantage,” Schumer said.

YMTC, Cambricon, and CETC didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times by press time.

Reuters contributed to this report.