The Biden Administration has issued broad restrictions on the technology China can buy from the U.S. to advance it military goals and boost its economy. But is it working? Lisa Fletcher takes a look.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

China’s “saber-rattling” displays of its military size and might are intended to send a message: the communist nation is a clear and present danger to the United States and the world.

So to cripple China’s ambitions, in August of 2023, the Biden administration banned U.S. suppliers from exporting or selling to China the high-tech means it needs to achieve its military goals.

The new export rules also ban key advanced chips made outside of the U.S., with American technology, from being sold to China.

Nazak Nikakhtar: There are gaps in those rules, and those gaps are such that China can easily circumvent them.

Nazak Nikakhtar is a former assistant secretary for the Department of Commerce. She says China is exploiting loopholes and still able to import what it needs.

Nikakhtar: This is not a country that has any intention by playing by the rules. The entire Chinese governance system, economic system, business system, is aimed to circumvent. What’s China going to do? 

Nikakhtar also says the U.S. government has granted some semiconductor companies up to two years before they need to comply with the new export rules.

Lisa: How dangerous is it to give them one or two extra years?

Nikakhtar: They know that at some point, the gaps in our rules are going to be closed to some degree. That incentivizes them to hurry up and quickly acquire the technology that they need.

Lisa: If China is able to hoard and control this technology, what does that translate to on the battlefield?

Nikakhtar: These semiconductor chips in the next generation, you can do quite a bit in terms of weapons target detection. Let’s take hypersonic weapons capabilities. It can not only better detect targets, but it can change target detection based on its flight pattern, right?

China’s current command of the world stage arguably began more than 20 years ago when Congress, under the Clinton administration, granted China permanent normal trade relations with the U.S. That paved the way for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, or WTO, which gave China new trading partners and better terms, spurring explosive economic and military growth. That wealth then laying the groundwork for China’s dominance on and off the battlefield.

Nikakhtar: If we can’t get it right in terms of semiconductor export controls, we’re not going to get it right in AI controls. If the technology is critical enough to control, then it shouldn’t be going to China.

China has not taken the sanctions lightly. Last summer, they announced export restrictions on key rare earth minerals essential to the production of high-end chips. 

For Full Measure, I’m Lisa Fletcher.

Watch video here.

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