Washington has added 80 entities – including companies involved in the development of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) – to an export restrictions register, according to a Monday statement from the US government’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS). The vast majority of them hail from China.
The so-called Entity List targets companies, research institutions, government agencies and individuals that Washington believes are endangering US national security and foreign policy. It also includes organisations from the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Iran and other places.
In the statement, BIS claimed its objectives included restricting the Chinese government’s ability to acquire and develop high-performance computing capabilities and quantum technologies for military applications; impeding the development of China’s hypersonic weapons programme; and preventing entities associated with the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA) “from using US items to train Chinese military forces.”
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The statement quoted US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick saying that the US would “not allow adversaries to exploit American technology” to allegedly “bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives.”
According to Jeffrey I. Kessler, the US under secretary of commerce for industry and security, the Entity List was “one of many powerful tools at our disposal to identify and cut off foreign adversaries seeking to exploit American technology for malign purposes.”
The latest additions to the Entity List also included organisations the US alleges are contributing to “unsafeguarded nuclear activities” and “acquiring or attempting to acquire US-origin items in support of China’s military modernisation.”
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The Global Times reported that Chinese companies on the updated list included six subsidiaries of Inspur Group, a leading cloud computing and big data service provider; Chinese server manufacturer Nettrix Information Industry Co; high-tech firm Suma Technology Co, and electronic products designer and manufacturer Suma-USI Electronics.
Bao Jianyun, director of the Center for International Political Economy Studies at Renmin University of China, told the paper that the move showed the US was feeling anxious about China’s rapid gains in the technology sector – which have been sparked by an increasing urgency around self-sufficiency. He described the development as an “escalation of its long-running effort to contain China’s technological rise.”
China has been pushing for self-reliance in the semiconductor industry in recent years, a process that’s been accelerated by waves of export control measures imposed by the US as Washington openly wages a tech war on Beijing.
