The White House announced new trade-war sanctions against China’s semiconductor and related industries for the third time in three years. Like the administration’s last set of financial sanctions against Russia and its banking system, these restrictions of China’s chips sector were, by far, the most far-reaching attempt to completely deny China access to artificial intelligence applications for defense or war.
The new restrictions announced Dec. 2, blocking exports to 140 Chinese companies:
• include sanctions against Chinese financial institutions which merely invest in advanced Chinese chip makers, trying to force the latter’s stocks to collapse;
• change the “foreign direct product rule” to ban the export to China of any chip-making machinery by seven countries in Europe and Asia, if the tool contains so much as a single transistor made in the United States;
• escalate a designation of China’s biggest chip manufacturer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International, to a complete trade blockade; and
