Senators Urge DNI to Study Risks of YMTC on Chip Sector, US Security
The director of national intelligence should study how a potential “supplier partnership arrangement” between China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. and Apple would affect U.S. national security, four senators said in a Sept. 21 bipartisan letter to DNI Avril Haines. The study should assess how China supports YMTC as part of a plan to advance its domestic semiconductor industry, how YMTC potentially helps Chinese firms evade U.S. sanctions and YMTC’s role in China’s civil-military fusion program.
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The senators -- including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; Mark Warner, D-Va.; and John Cornyn, R-Texas -- said they have “extreme concern” about the possibility that Apple will buy its memory chips from YMTC, which “would introduce significant privacy and security vulnerabilities to the global digital supply chain” (see 2209160064). The lawmakers said they asked the Commerce Department in July to add YMTC to the Entity List “based on the company’s central role in [China’s] efforts to supplant U.S. technological leadership, including through unfair trade practices” (see 2208020058).
A partnership with Apple would allow YMTC to “distort” the “highly cyclical” semiconductor market and sell chips “below cost in an effort to push out” chip competitors. “A partnership between Apple and YMTC would endanger this critical sector and risk nullifying efforts to support it, jeopardizing the health of chipmakers in the U.S. and allied countries and advancing Beijing’s goal of controlling the global semiconductor market,” they said.
The DNI should convene intelligence community members to produce a “comprehensive public” report on YMTC, which should be used to inform federal agencies about risks posed by the technology company, the letter said. The DNI didn’t respond to a request for comment.