A microchip fabrication plant in Taichung, Taiwan, owned by the world’s most advanced chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC.
Taipei: A few weeks ago, analysts at a specialized technological lab put a microchip from China under a powerful microscope.
Something didn’t look right.
Figuring out where a tiny electronic chip was made is a bit like trying to authenticate a painting.
A trained art appraiser can tell its provenance by brushstrokes, the signature, the chemical composition of pigments.
For chips, details like the microscopic layout and material makeup of the transistors are telltale signs of which foundry produced it.
The microscopic proof was there that a chunk of the electronic components from Chinese high-tech champion Huawei Technologies had been produced by the world’s most advanced chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
That was a problem because two US administrations in succession had taken actions to assurethat didn’t happen.
The news of the breach of US export controls, first reported in Octoberby the tech news site the Information, has sent a wave of concern through Washington, expressed among others by Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, in a letter to President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
Warner castigated the Commerce Department for what he called “leadership failures” in keeping the technologies underpinning next-generation artificial intelligence from filtering their way to China. “TSMC’s production of chips for Huawei has serious implications for US national security,” he wrote.
The chips were routed to Huawei through Sophgo Technologies, the AI venture of a Chinese cryptocurrency billionaire, according to two people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.
The Commerce Department defended itself in a statement, saying that more than 400 Chinese entities had been added to its controlled list under the Biden administration and that it was constantly updating controls to address diversion tactics.
“No Commerce Department in history has been tougher on China,” the agencysaid.
The technology’s presence in a Chinese champion’s products underscoresthe challenges for the US government as it attempts to slow China’s AI development by reaching beyond US borders to police the activities of companies using American technology like TSMC.
“It raises some fundamental questions about how well we can actually enforce these rules,” said Emily Kilcrease, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.
Huawei’s semiconductor operations have been in the US government’s crosshairs since 2020, when the Trump administration implemented a first round of export controls against its chip division.
These controls blocked foundries like TSMC from doing business with Huawei if they wanted continued access to critical US technology.
Huawei told The Washington Post in a statement that it had not “produced any chips via TSMC” since 2020 and “doesn’t have any business deal with Sophgo.”
The company added that it had not been contacted by the US government or TSMC about this matter.
