News U.S. lawmakers ask top fab tool makers about their sales to China

[Admin]

Before tightening export controls, U.S. legislators want to learn about sales of American producers of chipmaking tools to China-based entities.

U.S. lawmakers ask top fab tool makers about their sales to China : Read more

 

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I thought a lot of these data are considered corporate secrets and strategic to their operations. Since when does two US senators has the power to command any companies from anywhere in the world to give up these info which would then be easily obtainable by hackers/CIA/or even published by the media? They’re definitely overstepping.

 

[blazorthon]

I thought a lot of these data are considered corporate secrets and strategic to their operations. Since when does two US senators has the power to command any companies from anywhere in the world to give up these info which would then be easily obtainable by hackers/CIA/or even published by the media? They’re definitely overstepping.

Congress has the power to ban US companies from selling much of anything directly to China, as we have seen happening with Nvidia's top GPUs and other things. These two senators are acting within their powers to ask questions about the sales these chip making companies are making to China and it's probably better to ask such questions before taking action rather than just banning things and figuring out the consequences of doing so after the fact. It's also just asking questions regarding what is being sold to who and in what quantity, not demanding technical documents that can be used to reverse engineer anything. They're not overstepping their legal powers by asking such questions. We might disagree with what they're doing, but it is within their power to do it.