The United States and China have been at odds over issues related to chips and AI. It was precisely at the moment when artificial intelligence was shown as the new center of attention, when the United States attacked China, eliminating it from the competition. This was achieved by issuing sanctions and restrictions to prevent the Asian country from being able to purchase AI chips or export machinery. Although the regulations have been present all the time, there are those who have tried
skip it and export machines to China to create chips, but USA has discovered
two citizens guilty and one is already detained.
We all know the history of the Huawei company and how the United States almost ended its presence in the Western market after putting it on its blacklist. He Huawei case
It happened in 2018 and after so many years, we see how the Chinese brand is beginning to gain momentum again, although this time using its own SoC. This is because China basically cannot buy more advanced American chips or use modern machinery. Despite this, SMIC and Huawei managed to create a SoC at 7nm
using the best they had.
The US has charged two citizens for trying to export chip machines to China in violation of the law
Xi Jinping, the president of China, said a month ago that
They didn’t need ASML
as the leading European chip machinery manufacturer. And it is not only the United States that was responsible for preventing exports, but Europe also ended up following these steps. The president’s conclusion is that they were not going to give up and would continue to progress using their own technology to move forward. Although we cannot deny that China is very interested in following its own path seeing the amount of processors and graphics that are being developedthat doesn’t mean they are following the law without repercussions.
Just as we have seen several cases of Chinese workers stealing information and documents of large companies, now we see two Chinese citizens who have been charged by the US. having tried to export chip machinery to China. The curious thing about all this is that it did not happen now, at a time when the laws are more severe, but quite a few years ago. The two accused people are Han Li, 44 years old and who was arrested in Chicago and Lin Chen, 64 years old, who is believed to be in China.
The two defendants will have a combined maximum sentence of 55 years in prison and $2.5 million in fines.
It was during May 2015 and August 2018
when both Lin and Han made a plan to obtain a
DTX 150 Scribe and Break machine from the Dynatex brand. This is a machine for cut silicon wafers with great precision. His idea was to be able to export the machine to China, specifically to the Changdu GaStone Technology company. The problem is that this company in question was on the black list of prohibited entities in the United States and therefore, doing this was facing the law.
Additionally, the two citizens also violated the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). This law allows the president to regulate international trade in the event of a national emergency and has existed since Trump took power. Along with other minor charges of illegal smuggling, they ended up getting a combined maximum sentence of 55 years in prison and $2.5 million in fines.
