Executive Order On Enhancing Safeguards For United States Signals Intelligence Activities

The Biden administration introduced sweeping new limits on the sale of semiconductor technology to China, a step aimed at crippling Beijing’s access to critical technologies that are needed for everything from supercomputing to guiding weapons. The moves are the clearest sign yet that a dangerous standoff between the world’s two major superpowers is increasingly playing out in the technological sphere, with the US trying to establish a stranglehold on advanced computing and semiconductor technology that is essential to China’s military and economic ambitions. The package of restrictions, which was released by the US Department of Commerce, is designed in large part to slow the progress of Chinese military programs, which use supercomputing to model nuclear blasts, guide hypersonic weapons and establish advanced networks for surveilling dissidents and minorities, among other activities. Technology experts said the rules appeared to impose the broadest export controls issued in a decade. Overall, legislation states that companies will no longer be allowed to supply advanced computing chips, chip-making equipment, and other products to China unless they receive a special license.