The U.S. Commerce Department has extended its economic blacklist of Chinese firms by adding seven supercomputing organizations that it alleges are assisting Chinese military efforts.
Non-US companies need approval from the US Commerce Department before they can receive items from US-based suppliers.
The Commerce Department accused the seven supercomputing firms were building supercomputers that were used by China’s aggressive military actors, even perhaps for their weapons of mass destruction programs.
Weapons of supercomputing
A Chinese draft economic blueprint last month called for Chinese legislators to allocate more budget to companies in seven identified areas including Artificial Intelligence (AI), and quantum computing, which it deemed pertained to “national security and overall development.”
During the previous Trump administration, the US added several dozen Chinese companies to its economic blacklist including the Shenzhen-headquartered hardware giant Huawei, partially state-owned semiconductor major SMIC, and DJI, one of the world’s largest drone makers.
According to reports, the department has now added Tianjin Phytium Information Technology, Shanghai High-Performance Integrated Circuit Design Center, Sunway Microelectronics, the National Supercomputing Center Jinan, the National Supercomputing Center Shenzhen, the National Supercomputing Center Wuxi, and the National Supercomputing Center Zhengzhou to its blacklist.
Reacting to the addition of the supercomputing firms to the ban list, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, at a daily news conference in Beijing, said “U.S. containment and suppression cannot hold back the march of China’s scientific and technological development.”
Lijian added that the Chinese government will take “necessary measures” to protect the rights and interests of its companies.
Via: Reuters