Biden criticized by Democratic Senator over "lax monitoring" of Huawei sanctions
President Joe Biden is feeling the pressure after a member of his own party criticized the president for "apparent lax monitoring" of TSMC after word that an unknown chip manufactured by the Taiwan-based foundry ended up inside a Huawei product. This is a big deal because a change to U.S. export rules put in place by the U.S. Commerce Department in 2020 prevents foundries that use U.S. technology to make chips from shipping cutting-edge silicon to Chinese phone manufacturer Huawei.
A letter written by Democratic Senator Mark Warner obtained by Reuters criticizes the Biden administration not only for its lax monitoring but also for "repeated leadership failures" in enforcing the revised U.S. export rule changes. The chip in question was discovered inside a Huawei AI processor possibly violating the U.S. sanctions imposed against global chip foundries (like TSMC) and Huawei.
Huawei has been considered a national security threat to the U.S. and was originally placed on the Commerce Department's entity list in 2019. This prevents the manufacturer from obtaining supplies from U.S. companies including Google. At one time, Huawei was TSMC's second biggest customer. Still, once the sanctions took effect, the firm was forced to rely on older processors that the Commerce Department allowed the San Diego-based fabless chip designer to ship to Huawei. These chips also had to be tweaked to prevent them from working with 5G networks.
Joe Biden is being blamed by a Senator for not monitoring TSMC's dealings with Huawei. | Image Credit-NorthEastern
But Huawei stunned the industry last year by working with China's largest foundry, SMIC, to build the Kirin 9000s processor which was used to power the Mate 60 series. The chip supports 5G allowing the Mate 60 line to offer 5G connectivity for a Huawei flagship phone for the first time since 2020's Mate 40 series. U.S. lawmakers are worried that Huawei might be able to build cutting-edge processors even though SMIC and other foundries in the country do not have the tools to produce chips as advanced as those made by TSMC and Samsung Foundry.
What Senator Warner is concerned about is the possibility that TSMC built chips for an intermediary that had a deal with Huawei. This would help Huawei get around the U.S. restrictions to obtain chips that it cannot purchase itself.
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