Last October, the Biden administration unleashed one of its biggest countermeasures to date against China’s military ambitions: export controls on, among other things, cutting-edge semiconductors used for AI systems. The new rule restricts not just U.S. companies but any manufacturer that uses specified U.S. software or technology to build their products. As Kevin Wolf, who ran the U.S. export-control regime from 2010 to 2017, put it, foreign dependence on U.S. equipment means that every such chip “on the planet” is now subject to U.S. controls.
The measure has alarmed China. President Xi Jinping blames the U.S. for orchestrating a campaign to encircle, suppress and contain his country, while commentators claim that the U.S. is drawing closed a “Silicon Curtain.”
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, “How the U.S. Stumbled Into Using Chips as a Weapon Against China,” Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2023.