What’s new: The U.S. government has approved about 69.9% of some 40,000 export license applications involving China in the 2022 fiscal year, according to written testimony ahead of a hearing before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Tuesday.
“I want to be clear that even as we pursue actions that protect U.S. national security and foreign policy interests, we are not interested in decoupling our economy from the PRC,” the document cited Alan F. Estevez, Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security as saying, in his report on the work of the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS).
In his report, Estevez did not give examples of approved applications, but said “the world’s two biggest economies should continue to engage in legitimate commercial trade that does not impact U.S. national security or foreign policy interests.”
The context: The U.S. has imposed license requirements for exports of a list of advanced computing and semiconductor technologies, including chips and equipment to manufacture chipmaking machines.
“The most powerful computing capabilities — namely large-scale AI models and very powerful supercomputers, which are built on advanced semiconductors — present U.S. national security concerns because they allow the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to use AI to significantly improve the speed and accuracy of military decision making, planning, and logistics,” Estevez was cited as saying.
It has also made a list of Chinese companies and other organizations that are restricted from accessing relevant U.S. technologies.
Estevez said BIS’s goal is to “prevent sensitive U.S. technologies from getting into the hands of the PRC’s military, intelligence, security services.”
Related: In Depth: Why Is Chip Giant TSMC Investing in the U.S. When It Doesn’t Need to?
Contact reporter Guo Yingzhe (yingzheguo@caixin.com)
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