The Biden administration needs to soon update its China-related chip export controls and apply “full blocking sanctions” to Huawei and China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., top House Republicans recently said in a letter to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Those measures and others will address what the lawmakers said has been a ”failure” by the administration and the Bureau of Industry and Security to properly enforce the Oct. 7 chip restrictions, which placed new license requirements on a host of chip-related exports and activities involving China.

U.S. sanctions and export controls have so far “not been sufficient to deter” China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China analysts James Mulvenon and Joseph McReynolds said in a report released this month on Mulvenon’s website. The report said Applied Materials, Lam Research, Tokyo Electron, KLA and other chip companies are “effectively selling a wide range of relevant tools” used for 28 nanometer use to China, but SMIC likely is using them for 7 nm production.

The Bureau of Industry and Security added 49 entities, mostly from China, to the Entity List for shipping microelectronics to Russian consignees connected to the country’s defense sector. The entities are semiconductor companies, technology businesses, logistics companies and others, and also include companies based in Estonia, Finland, Germany, India, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the U.K.

Emily Weinstein is leaving her role as a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology to join the Bureau of Industry and Security, she announced this week on LinkedIn. She will serve as a senior adviser to BIS Undersecretary Alan Estevez. Some of Weinstein's recent work has included co-writing research advocating for new multilateral export control efforts (see 2205240039 and 2306270043). She also has outlined a potential way BIS can use its “catch-all controls” to tighten restrictions around exports of sensitive artificial intelligence models (see 2307060037), and has proposed the Biden administration take an end-user list-based approach to restricting outbound investments in Chinese artificial intelligence companies (see 2308300044).

The Bureau of Industry and Security sent an interim final rule for interagency review this week that could update U.S. export controls on certain semiconductor manufacturing items and make modifications to the Entity List. The rule was sent to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Oct. 4. A BIS spokesperson declined to comment about what the rule will entail.

LONDON -- A looming Bureau of Industry and Security rule that would expand the agency’s restrictions on U.S. persons' activities is “going to be a compliance challenge that I don't think we're ready for,” said Robert Monjay, a former BIS analyst and export control executive with Intel.

The Bureau of Industry and Security added 49 entities from China, Estonia, Finland, Germany, India, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the U.K. to its Entity List for providing support to Russia’s military or to its defense industrial base. The entities, outlined in a final rule effective Oct. 6, are subject to license requirements for all items subject to the Export Administration Regulations, and licenses will be reviewed under a policy of denial.

LONDON -- The Bureau of Industry and Security is increasingly sending out is-informed letters to warn companies that some of their currently unrestricted products need an export license before they can be shipped, said Nancy Fischer, a Pillsbury trade lawyer. Some companies receiving the letters view them as unfair, Fischer said, particularly because BIS doesn’t always send similar letters to their competitors.

The Bureau of Industry and Security dismissed appeals from a Turkish airline and a Russian tour company after both said they were wrongly implicated in a temporary denial order the agency renewed against a separate Russian airline in June.

LONDON -- The Bureau of Industry and Security is noticing a sharp uptick in low-level U.S. microelectronics exports to countries that weren’t involved in semiconductor-related shipments before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, said Liz Abraham, senior adviser for international policy at BIS. She said BIS is looking at creative ways to potentially restrict some of those shipments, even though many of them are designated under the Export Administration Regulations as EAR99 -- items that generally don’t require an export license.