The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities.
The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.”
Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization.
Photo: Reuters
“We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said.
The entities targeted include 11 based in China and one in Taiwan, accused of engaging in the development of advanced AI, supercomputers and high-performance AI chips for China-based users “with close ties to the country’s military-industrial complex.”
They include the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (北京人工智能研究院) and subsidiaries of information technology giant Inspur Group (浪潮集團).
Others were included for “contributions to unsafeguarded nuclear activities” or ballistic missile programs.
The aim is to prevent US technologies and goods from being misused for activities like high-performance computing, hypersonic missiles and military aircraft training, US Undersecretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Jeffrey Kessler said.
Two entities in Iran and China were also added to the list for seeking to procure US items for Iran’s defense industry and drone programs, the commerce department said.
Beijing condemned the blacklisting of its firms, accusing Washington of “weaponizing” trade and technology in a “typical act of hegemonism.”
“We urge the US side to stop generalizing the concept of national security... and stop abusing all kinds of sanctions lists to unreasonably suppress Chinese enterprises,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) said at a daily news conference.
China would take “necessary measures” to defend its firms’ rights, Guo added.
Meanwhile, Taiwan would investigate why the Taiwanese subsidiary of Inspur Group, China’s leading cloud computing and big data service provider, was added to the trade blacklist, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday.
Inspur Taiwan, located in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋), is also known by the names Number Media Ltd (數字雲端) and Inspur Taiwan — R&D Center (台灣浪潮 －研發中心).
The ministry would “quickly investigate” the company’s situation, including what US regulations it is accused of breaching, Kuo said.
If the company acted illegally, the government would impose penalties, he said.
The government has been working with companies to confirm the end user of their products, and ensure that they are not inadvertently breaching trade rules, he added.
Additional reporting by CNA
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
AMAZING ABUNDANCE: Elon Musk has announced plans for a new facility in Texas which would manufacture chips for Tesla and SpaceX to use in robotics and AI Elon Musk said his Terafab project — a grand plan to eventually manufacture his own chips for robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and space data centers — would be built in Austin and jointly run by Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX). Musk, the chief executive officer of the two companies, said he would start off with an “advanced technology fab” in Austin that would have all of the equipment necessary to make chips of any kind. The project would call for one day supporting 1 terawatt (TW) of computing power per year, the amount Musk expects the companies to
RSS