Dutch chip equipment maker ASML isn’t expecting to receive export licenses this year to ship several of its deep ultraviolet immersion lithography systems to China, along with one older DUV tool not previously disclosed by the company.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is undergoing a restructuring to separate its licensing work from its efforts to evaluate and protect emerging and foundational technologies, said Eileen Albanese, director of the Office of National Security and Technology Transfer Controls. She said the agency plans to hire at least three new senior officials to usher in the reorganization, which will help BIS meet its “broader mandate.”
The U.S. and the EU are making progress on more closely aligning their encryption-related export controls, a senior Bureau of Industry and Security official said last week, along with differences in export licensing and classification.
The Bureau of Industry and Security will likely issue more penalty announcements this year for export control violations, a former senior BIS enforcement official said, suggesting the current state of enforcement is unprecedented.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is preparing to announce more “significant” export penalties and corporate resolutions this year, said Matthew Axelrod, the agency’s top export enforcement official. He also said exporters should see more export-related indictments as part of a joint effort with DOJ, and he continued to pitch a BIS funding boost, which would help it hire more export enforcement agents.
The Bureau of Industry and Security has been experiencing delays in semiconductor-related export license applications due to a higher number of disagreements with the other agencies that also review those licenses, a senior BIS official said this week.
The European Commission on Jan. 25 issued new guidelines for how member states and the commission collect and share export licensing data as the EU prepares its annual export control report (see 2301270011). The new rules “for the first time” state that the annual report “should include relevant information on the licensing and enforcement” of export controls, the guidelines said, “with due respect to the need to ensure the protection of the confidentiality of certain data.”
Japan, which suffered economic coercion from China earlier than any other country, is largely on the same page as the U.S. when it comes to supply chain resilience and restrictions on exports, but the two diverge in their attitudes about China's role in the global economy.
Four Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, sent Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo a series of recommendations for strengthening firearms export controls, Warren’s office said Jan. 24.
The U.K. issued an alert this week warning that Russian oligarchs may be using artwork storage facilities to hide their frozen assets, evade sanctions or launder money. People and companies involved in the art industry should be conducting “regular due diligence checks to understand any change in a client’s circumstances, or those of elites they may represent,” the country’s National Crime Agency, Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation and other agencies said.