The National Science and Technology Council is slated to reveal a critical technologies list soon to safeguard Taiwan’s technological competitive edges and national security in the wake of the US’ warning about mounting risk from China, Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) said yesterday.
“We have been in discussions for some time,” Wang told reporters in response to a question about whether Taiwan would follow in the steps of the US and tighten its grip over exports of semiconductor and other key technologies.
“The National Science and Technology Council is to release the list regarding critical technologies soon. Taiwan is to impose severe curbs on those technologies,” Wang said. “Taiwan’s critical technological competencies and national security will be our main consideration.”
Photo: CNA
The ministry has recognized foundry, semiconductor packaging and testing, as well as LCD technologies as some of the nation’s critical technologies with strategic importance. Local semiconductor and LCD companies are faced with the ministry’s strict scrutiny and assessment before being granted approval to invest advanced technologies in China, or to conduct equity transfers to Chinese peers.
The National Science and Technology Council said a special task force is scheduled to convene a meeting by the end of this year to identify new core and critical technologies and to impose curbs on the exports of those key technologies. That will be a further step taken by the council more than half a year after the new regulation on the designation of national core critical technologies had taken effect in April.
The council said it aims to prevent technology leaks to China, including Hong Kong and Macau, or foreign hostile forces, to prevent them from undermining the nation’s national security, industrial competitiveness or economic development.
Semiconductors, agriculture, aerospace, and information and communications technology are expected to be on the list, National Security Council Secretary-General Wellington Koo (顧立雄) told Nikkei Asia earlier this week.
The EU is to assess whether semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and biotechnology pose a risk to the bloc’s economic security, which could lead to curbs on exports or investments in third countries such as China, Reuters reported.
US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo told a US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing on Wednesday that reports of Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) chip breakthrough were “incredibly disturbing.”
Raimondo said more resources were needed for export controls enforcement and that the department should be granted more power to check whether any technology transactions could pose national security risks.
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
Nvidia Corp’s GB300 platform is expected to account for 70 to 80 percent of global artificial intelligence (AI) server rack shipments this year, while adoption of its next-generation Vera Rubin 200 platform is to gradually gain momentum after the third quarter of the year, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said. Servers based on Nvidia’s GB300 chips entered mass production last quarter and they are expected to become the mainstay models for Taiwanese server manufacturers this year, Trendforce analyst Frank Kung (龔明德) said in an interview. This year is expected to be a breakout year for AI servers based on a variety of chips, as
RSS