The countries with the greatest capacity to develop, produce and acquire state-of-the-art semiconductor chips hold key advantages in the development of emerging technologies. At present, the United States and its allies possess significant leverage over core segments of the supply chain used to produce these chips. This policy brief outlines actions the United States and its allies can take to secure that advantage in the long term and use it to promote the beneficial use of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

The success of modern AI techniques relies on computation on a scale unimaginable even a few years ago. What exactly are the AI chips powering the development and deployment of AI at scale and why are they essential? Saif M. Khan and Alexander Mann explain how these chips work, why they have proliferated, and why they matter.

In 2018, the Commerce Department proposed categories of “emerging technology” for export controls. “The problem is that these categories are exceptionally broad, denoting large buckets of technologies that are often layered into a diverse set of applications, most with no relevance to national security,” says CSET’s Lorand Laskai.

ETO's Supply Chain Explorer is designed to quickly orient non-experts to the essential inputs, players, and relationships involved in producing advanced computer chips. Use the Explorer to learn how these chips are made, who makes them, and the tools, materials, and processes involved in the supply chain.

CSET’s lead analyst, William Hannas, spoke to The Cipher Brief about his new report, China’s Access to Foreign AI Technology. “There is no sustained effort within the U.S. government to combat China’s predations because the problem is misconstrued as one of pure espionage,” he said.

“China clearly wants to lead the world when it comes to AI,” says CSET’s Helen Toner. “It’s hard to imagine China being seen as a world leader if the open-source frameworks are so US-dominated.”

The U.S. semiconductor supply chain’s resilience will meaningfully increase only if current efforts to re-shore fabrication (that is, to situate more facilities that make its key parts in the United States) are met with commensurate efforts to re-shore upstream material production along with downstream assembly, test, and packaging (ATP) of finished microelectronics.

The United States and its allies enjoy a competitive advantage in the production of artificial intelligence chips necessary for leading AI research and implementation. This memo identifies chokepoints for limiting China’s access to key chipmaking equipment.

Congress has advanced legislation to appropriate $52 billion in funding for the CHIPS for America Act, which aims to increase semiconductor manufacturing and supply chain resilience in the United States. But more can be done to improve the resiliency of U.S. access to microelectronics beyond manufacturing incentives. This report outlines infrastructure investments and regulatory reforms that could make the United States a more attractive place to build new chipmaking capacity and ensure continued U.S. access to key inputs for semiconductor manufacturing.