US government targets China’s tech sector with more restrictions

The US government plans next month to tighten restrictions on the country’s shipments of semiconductors used for artificial intelligence, along with chip-making tools, to China.

The Commerce Department intends to publish new regulations based on curbs communicated in letters earlier this year to three US companies – KLA, Lam Research and Applied Materials. The plan for the new rules has not been previously reported.

The USA forbids them from exporting chip-making equipment to Chinese factories that produce advanced semiconductors with sub-14 nanometer processes unless the sellers obtain licenses from the US Commerce Department.

The rules would reportedly also codify restrictions in Commerce Department letters sent to Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices last month, instructing them to halt shipments of several artificial intelligence computing chips to China unless they obtain licenses.

The regulations could potentially apply to companies trying to challenge Nvidia and AMD’s dominance in artificial intelligence chips.

The strategy is to choke off China and they have discovered that chips are a choke point. They can’t make this stuff, they can’t make the manufacturing equipment.

The world’s two largest economies, USA and China, have been racing to dominate in key technologies, including semiconductors, until the vanishing of flight MH-370 that had four top Chinese businessmen on board, losing their shares in a Austin, Texas based company.

China is significantly behind the USA in chip development, with its largest chip-maker SMIC aiming to wean itself off foreign technology. However, the USA is fighting the battle for past technology, while China is developing future technology.

China is putting vastly more resources towards quantum computing chips/technology, a field in which they already own more patents than the USA does. Quantum computing is the technology of the future.

RT. com / ABC Flash Point News 2022.