In conversations with American executives this spring, top officials in the Biden administration revealed an aggressive plan to counter the Chinese military's rapid technological advances.
China was using supercomputing and artificial intelligence to develop stealth and hypersonic weapons systems and to try to crack the US government's most encrypted messaging, according to intelligence reports. For months, administration officials debated what they could do to hobble the country's progress.
They saw a path: the Biden administration would use US influence over global technology and supply chains to try to choke off China's access to advanced chips and chip production tools needed to power those abilities. The goal was to keep Chinese entities that contributed to potential threats far behind their competitors in the United States and in allied nations.
The effort, no less than what the Americans had carried out against Soviet industries during the Cold War, gained momentum this year as the United States tested powerful economic tools against Russia as punishment for its invasion of Ukraine and as China broke barriers in technological development. The Russian offensive and Beijing's military actions also made the possibility of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan seem more real to US officials.
The administration's concerns about China's tech ambitions culminated last week in the unveiling of the most stringent controls by the US government on technology exports to the country in decades — an opening salvo that would ripple through global commerce and could frustrate other governments and companies outside China.
In a speech Wednesday on the administration's national security strategy, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, talked about a "small yard, high fence" for critical technologies.
"Chokepoints for foundational technologies have to be inside that yard, and the fence has to be high because these competitors should not be able to exploit American and allied technologies to undermine American and allied security," he said.
This account of how President Joe Biden and his aides decided to wage a new global campaign against China, which contains previously unreported details, is based on interviews with two dozen current and former officials and industry executives. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss deliberations.
The measures were particularly notable given the Biden administration's preference for announcing policies in tandem with allies to counter rival powers, as it did with sanctions against Russia.
With China, the administration spent months in discussions with allies, including the Dutch, Japanese, South Korean, Israeli and British governments, and tried to persuade some of them to issue restrictions alongside the United States.
But some of those governments have been hesitant to cut off important commerce with China, one of the world's largest technology markets. So the Biden administration decided to act alone, without public measures from allies.
Gregory Allen, a former Defense Department official who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the move came after consultation with allies but was "fundamentally unilateral".
"In weaponising its dominant choke-point positions in the global semiconductor value chain, the United States is exercising technological and geopolitical power on an incredible scale," he wrote in an analysis.
The package of restrictions allows the administration to cut off China from certain advanced chips made by American and foreign companies that use US technology.
US officials described the decision to push ahead with export controls as a show of leadership. They said some allies wanted to impose similar measures but feared retaliation from China, so the rules from Washington that encompass foreign companies did the hard work for them.
Other rules bar American companies from selling Chinese firms equipment or components needed to manufacture advanced chips, and prohibit Americans and US companies from giving software updates and other services to China's cutting-edge chip factories.
The measures do not directly restrict foreign makers of semiconductor equipment from selling products to China. But experts said the absence of the US equipment would most likely impede China's nascent industry for making advanced chips. Eventually, though, that leverage could fade as China develops its own key production technologies.
Some companies have chafed at the idea of losing sales in a lucrative market. In a call with investors in August, an executive at Tokyo Electron in Japan said the company was "very concerned" that restrictions could prevent its Chinese customers from producing chips. ASML, the Dutch equipment maker, has expressed criticisms.
Chinese officials called the US restrictions a significant step aimed at sabotaging their country's development. The move could have broad implications — for example, limiting advances in artificial intelligence that propel autonomous driving, video recommendation algorithms and gene sequencing, as well as quashing China's chipmaking industry.
China could respond by punishing foreign companies with operations there. And the way Washington is imposing the rules could strain US alliances, some experts say.
"Sanctions that put the United States at odds with its allies and partners today will both undercut their effectiveness and make it harder to enrol a broad coalition of states in US deterrence efforts," said Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of government at Cornell University and a recent State Department official.
Others have argued the moves did not come soon enough. For years, US intelligence reports warned that US technology was feeding China's efforts to develop advanced weapons and surveillance networks that police its citizens.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Ana Swanson and Edward Wong
Photographs by: Erin Schaff and Qilai Shen
© 2022 THE NEW YORK TIMES
