Recently, the Bureau of Industrial Security (BIS) of the US Department of Commerce announced the addition of six emerging technologies to the Department of Commerce Control List (CCL) under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). The US Department of Commerce wrote in an announcement on its official website: “This move is to support the national strategy of key and emerging technologies.”

It is understood that the total number of emerging technologies currently subject to export control has reached 37.

The announcement pointed out that the latest commercial export control was implemented in accordance with the agreement reached at the General Assembly in December 2019-the Wassenaar Agreement on Export Control of Conventional Arms and Dual-use Goods and Technologies. After formulating and implementing multilateral control of emerging technologies meets the requirements of the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA), it is finally determined that controlling the export of the following emerging and basic technologies will play a vital role in U.S. national security.

The six emerging technologies added to the commercial control list this time are:

1. Hybrid additive manufacturing/computer numerical control tools;

2. Specific computational lithography software;

3. Certain technologies used to produce finished wafers for 5nm;

4. Limited digital forensic analysis tools;

5. Certain software used to monitor telecommunication service communications

6. Suborbital spacecraft

The six major technologies that the United States implements export controls are all closely related to the most important equipment lithography machine in chip manufacturing, especially now that 5nm chips have become mainstream products in the era of high-end chips, the importance of EUV lithography machines in the semiconductor process can be imagined.

At present, the only company in the world that can produce EUV lithography machines is the Dutch ASML company, and ASML’s two largest shareholders, MSCI and BlackRock, Inc., are American companies that are used to build many high-precision technologies of EUV lithography machines are also owned by the United States.

The move of the US Department of Commerce is equivalent to a direct blockade of the manufacturing technology of high-end chips. Everyone knows who is targeted. From the current point of view, China, as one of the largest purchasers of US chip products, is greatly affected by export controls.