WASHINGTON D.C.: At a hearing this week, Senator Richard Blumenthal, chair of the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said that American semiconductor manufacturers must try to keep their chips from being used illegally in Russian military equipment.
Recent reports have shown that U.S.-origin chips and other technology continue to be used in a wide range of Russian equipment on the battlefield in Ukraine.
After reports of U.S.-made products in Russian equipment or flowing to Russia despite U.S. export controls, Blumenthal’s comments were aimed at U.S. chipmakers, including Advanced Micro Devices, Intel Corp, Texas Instruments and Analog Devices.
The companies “have the capacity to trace and track those components well enough to do something more,” Blumenthal said at the hearing, which aimed to find ways of ensuring that U.S. chipmakers comply with export restrictions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The subcommittee also sought related documents and information from the four chipmakers.
According to a memo by the committee majority staff, since 2021, exports to countries that Russia may be using to evade controls have increased.
During the hearing, three witnesses testified about how their organizations have tracked the use of U.S. chips and components in Russian weapons.
Damien Spleeters of Conflict Armament Research, a UK-based organization that found U.S.-origin parts in Russian weapons, said, “Russia acquires chips using third-country distributors which can be identified.”
The U.S. components tend to be produced in countries such as China, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and reach Russia through Turkey, the UAE, and countries bordering the Russian Federation, said Elina Ribakova from the Kyiv School of Economics.
Senator Ron Johnson, the subcommittee’s ranking member, said sanctions would always be evaded. “You plug one hole, another hole is going to be opening up,” he said.
