Silicon Valley & Technology

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Washington; Flagstaff, Arizona — President Joe Biden on Monday announced a $6.6 billion grant to Taiwan’s top chip manufacturer to produce semiconductors in the southwestern U.S. state of Arizona, which includes a third facility that will bring the foreign tech giant’s investment in the state to $65 billion.

Biden said the move aims to perk up a decades-old slump in American chip manufacturing. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which is based in the Chinese-claimed island, claims more than half of the global market share in chip manufacturing.

The new facility, Biden said, will put the U.S. on track to produce 20% of the world’s leading-edge semiconductors by 2030.

“I was determined to turn that around, and thanks to my CHIPS and Science Act — a key part of my Investing in America agenda — semiconductor manufacturing and jobs are making a comeback,” Biden said in a statement.

U.S. production of this American-born technology has fallen steeply in recent decades, said Andy Wang, dean of engineering at Northern Arizona University.

“As a nation, we used to produce 40% of microchips for the whole world,” he told VOA. “Now, we produce less than 10%.”

A single semiconductor transistor is smaller than a grain of sand. But billions of them, packed neatly together, can connect the world through a mobile phone, control sophisticated weapons of war and satellites that orbit the Earth, and someday may even drive a car.

The immense value of these tiny chips has fueled fierce competition between the U.S. and China.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has taken several steps to hamper China’s efforts to build its own chip industry. Those include export controls and new rules to prevent “foreign countries of concern” — which it said includes China, Iran, North Korea and Russia — from benefiting from funding from the CHIPS and Science Act.

While analysts are divided over whether Taiwan’s dominance of this critical industry makes it more or less vulnerable to Chinese aggression, they agree it confers the island significant global status.

“It is debatable what, if any, role Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing prowess plays in deterrence,” said David Sacks, an analyst who focuses on U.S.-China relations at the Council on Foreign Relations. “What is not debatable is how devastating an attack on Taiwan would be for the global economy.”

Biden did not mention U.S. adversaries in his statement, but he noted the impact of Monday’s announcement, saying it “represent(s) a broader story for semiconductor manufacturing that’s made in America and with the strong support of America’s leading technology firms to build the products we rely on every day.”

VOA met with engineers in the new technological hub state, who said the legislation addresses a key weakness in American chip manufacturing.

“We’ve just gotten in the cycle of the last 15 to 20 years, where innovation has slowed down,” said Todd Achilles, who teaches innovation, strategy and policy analysis at the University of California-Berkeley. “It’s all about financial results, investor payouts and stock buybacks. And we’ve lost that innovation muscle. And the CHIPS Act — pulling that together with the CHIPS Act — is the perfect opportunity to restore that.”

The White House says this new investment could create 25,000 construction and manufacturing jobs. Academics say they’re churning out workers at a rapid pace, but that still, America lacks talent.

“Our engineering college is the largest in the country, with over 33,000 enrolled students, and still we’re hearing from companies across the semiconductor industry that they’re not able to get the talent they need in time,” Zachary Holman, vice dean for research and innovation at Arizona State University, told VOA.

And as the American industry stretches to keep pace, it races a technical trend known as t: that the number of transistors in a computer chip doubles about every two years. As a result, cutting-edge chips get ever smaller as they grow in computing power.

TSMC in 2022 broke ground on a facility that makes the smallest chip currently available, coming in at 3 nanometers — that’s just wider than a strand of DNA.

Reporter Levi Stallings contributed to this report from Flagstaff, Arizona.
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President Joe Biden on Monday announced a $6.6 billion grant to Taiwan’s top chip manufacturer for semiconductor manufacturing in Arizona, which includes a third facility that will bring the tech giant’s investment in the state to $65 billion. VOA’s White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington, with reporter Levi Stallings in Flagstaff, Arizona.
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PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA — The Cambodian government is pushing ahead with a cybercrime law experts say could be wielded to further curtail freedom of speech amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent. 

The cybercrime draft is the third controversial internet law authorities have pursued in the past year as the government, led by new Prime Minister Hun Manet, seeks greater oversight of internet activities. 

Obtained by VOA in both English and Khmer language versions, the latest draft of the cybercrime law is marked “confidential” and contains 55 articles. It lays out various offenses punishable by fines and jail time, including defamation, using “insulting, derogatory or rude language,” and sharing “false information” that could harm Cambodia’s public order and “traditional culture.”  

The law would also allow authorities to collect and record internet traffic data, in real time, of people under investigation for crimes, and would criminalize online material that “depicts any act or activity … intended to stimulate sexual desire” as pornography. 

Digital rights and legal experts who reviewed the law told VOA that its vague language, wide-ranging categories of prosecutable speech and lack of protections for citizens fall short of international standards, instead providing the government more tools to jail dissenters, opposition members, women and LGBTQ+ people. 

Although in the works since 2016, earlier drafts of the law, which sparked similar criticism, have not leaked since 2020 and 2021. Authorities hope to enact the law by the end of the year. 

“This cybercrime bill offers the government even more power to go after people expressing dissent,” Kian Vesteinsson, a senior research analyst for technology at the human rights organization Freedom House, told VOA.  

“These vague provisions around defamation, insults and disinformation are ripe for abuse, and we know that Cambodian authorities have deployed similarly vague criminal provisions in other contexts,” Vesteinsson said. 

Cambodian law already considers defamation a criminal offense, but the cybercrime draft would make it punishable by jail time up to six months, plus a fine of up to $5,000. The “false information” clause — defined as sharing information that “intentionally harms national defense, national security, relations with other countries, economy, public order, or causes discrimination, or affects traditional culture” — carries a three- to five-year sentence and fine of up to $25,000. 

Daron Tan, associate international legal adviser at the International Commission of Jurists, told VOA the defamation and false information articles do not comply with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Cambodia is a party, and that the United Nations Human Rights Committee is “very clear that imprisonment is never the appropriate penalty for defamation.” 

“It’s a step very much in the wrong direction,” Tan said. “We are very worried that this would expand the laws that the government can use against its critics.” 

Chea Pov, the deputy head of Cambodia’s National Police and former director of the Ministry of Interior’s Anti-Cybercrime Department that is overseeing the drafting process, told VOA the law “doesn’t restrict your rights” and claimed the U.S. companies which reviewed it “didn’t raise concerns.”  

Google, Meta and Amazon, which the government has said were involved in drafting the law, did not respond to requests for comment. 

“If you say something based on evidence, there is no problem,” Pov said. “But if there is no evidence, [you] defame others, which is also stated in the criminal law … we don’t regard this as a restriction.”  

The law also makes it illegal to use technology to display, trade, produce or disseminate pornography, or to advertise a “product or service mixed with pornography” online. Pornography is defined as anything that “describes a genital or depicts any act or activity involving a sexual organ or any part of the human body, animal, or object … or other similar pornography that is intended to stimulate sexual desire or cause sexual excitement.” 

Experts say this broad category is likely to be disproportionately deployed against women and LGBTQ+ people. 

Cambodian authorities have often rebuked or arrested women for dressing “too sexily” on social media, singing sexual songs or using suggestive speech. In 2020, an online clothes and cosmetics seller received a six-month suspended sentence after posting provocative photos; in another incident, a policewoman was forced to publicly apologize for posting photos of herself breastfeeding. 

Naly Pilorge, outreach director at Cambodian human rights organization Licadho, told VOA the draft law “could lead to more rights violations against women in the country.” 

“This vague definition of ‘pornography’ poses a serious threat to any woman whose online activity the government decides may ‘cause sexual excitement,’” Pilorge said. “The draft law does not acknowledge any legitimate artistic or educational purposes to depict or describe sexual organs, posing another threat to freedom of expression.” 

In March, authorities said they hosted civil society organizations to revisit the draft. They plan to complete the drafting process and send the law to Parliament for passage before the end of the year, according to Pov, the deputy head of police. 

Soeung Saroeun, executive director of the NGO Forum on Cambodia, told VOA “there was no consultation on each article” at the recent meeting. 

“The NGO representatives were unable to analyze and present their inputs,” said Saroeun, echoing concerns about its contents. “How is it [possible]? We need to debate on this.” 

The cybercrime law has resurfaced as the government works to complete two other draft internet laws, one covering cybersecurity and the other personal data protection. Experts have critiqued the drafts as providing expanded police powers to seize computer systems and making citizens’ data vulnerable to hacking and surveillance. 

Authorities have also sought to create a national internet gateway that would require traffic to run through centralized government servers, though the status of that project has been unclear since early 2022 when the government said it faced delays. 
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WILMINGTON, Del. — The Biden administration pledged on Monday to provide up to $6.6 billion so that a Taiwanese semiconductor giant can expand the facilities it is already building in Arizona and better ensure that the most-advanced microchips are produced domestically for the first time. 

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the funding for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. means the company can expand on its existing plans for two facilities in Phoenix and add a third, newly announced production hub. 

“These are the chips that underpin all artificial intelligence, and they are the chips that are the necessary components for the technologies that we need to underpin our economy,” Raimondo said on a call with reporters, adding that they were vital to the “21st century military and national security apparatus.” 

The funding is tied to a sweeping 2022 law that President Joe Biden has celebrated and which is designed to revive U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. Known as the CHIPS and Science Act, the $280 billion package is aimed at sharpening the U.S. edge in military technology and manufacturing while minimizing the kinds of supply disruptions that occurred in 2021, after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when a shortage of chips stalled factory assembly lines and fueled inflation. 

The Biden administration has promised tens of billions of dollars to support construction of U.S. chip foundries and reduce reliance on Asian suppliers, which Washington sees as a security weakness. 

“Semiconductors – those tiny chips smaller than the tip of your finger – power everything from smartphones to cars to satellites and weapons systems,” Biden said in a statement. “TSMC’s renewed commitment to the United States, and its investment in Arizona represent a broader story for semiconductor manufacturing that’s made in America and with the strong support of America’s leading technology firms to build the products we rely on every day.” 

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. produces nearly all of the leading-edge microchips in the world and plans to eventually do so in the U.S. 

It began construction of its first facility in Phoenix in 2021, and started work on a second hub last year, with the company increasing its total investment in both projects to $40 billion. The third facility should be producing microchips by the end of the decade and will see the company’s commitment increase to a total of $65 billion, Raimondo said. 

The investments would put the U.S. on track to produce roughly 20% of the world’s leading-edge chips by 2030, and Raimondo said they should help create 6,000 manufacturing jobs and 20,000 construction jobs, as well as thousands of new positions more indirectly tied to assorted suppliers in chip-related industries tied to Arizona projects. 

The potential incentives announced Monday include $50 million to help train the workforce in Arizona to be better equipped to work in the new facilities. Additionally, approximately $5 billion of proposed loans would be available through the CHIPS and Science Act. 

“TSMC’s commitment to manufacture leading-edge chips in Arizona marks a new chapter for America’s semiconductor industry,” Lael Brainard, director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters. 

The announcement came as U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is traveling in China. Senior administration officials were asked on the call with reporters if the Biden administration gave China a head’s up on the coming investment, given the delicate geopolitics surrounding Taiwan. The officials said only that their focus in making Monday’s announcement was solely on advancing U.S. manufacturing. 

“We are thrilled by the progress of our Arizona site to date,” C.C. Wei, CEO of TSMC, said in a statement, “And are committed to its long-term success.” 
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PENTAGON — Russian microchip company AO PKK Milandr continued to provide microchips to the Russian armed forces at least several months after Russia invaded Ukraine, despite public denials by company director Alexey Novoselov of any connection with Russia’s military.

A formal letter obtained by VOA dated February 10, 2023, shows a sale request for 4,080 military grade microchips for the Russian military. The sale request was addressed from a deputy commander of the 546 military representation of the Russian Ministry of Defense and the commercial director of Russian manufacturer NPO Poisk to Milandr CEO S.V. Tarasenko for delivery by April 2023, more than a year into the war.

The letter instructs Milandr to provide three types of microchip components to NPO Poisk, a well-established Russian defense manufacturer that makes detonators for weapons used by the Russian Armed Forces.

“Each of these three circuits that you have in the table on the document, each one of them is classed as a military-grade component … and each of these is manufactured specifically by Milandr,” said Denys Karlovskyi, a research fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies. VOA shared the document with him to confirm its authenticity.

In addition to Milandr CEO Tarasenko, the letter is addressed to a commander of the Russian Defense Ministry’s 514 military representation of the Russian Ministry of Defense named I.A. Shvid.

Karlovskyi says this inclusion shows that Milandr, like Poisk, appears to have a Russian commander from the Defense Ministry’s oversight unit assigned to it — a clear indicator that a company is part of Russia’s defense industry.

Milandr, headquartered near Moscow in an area known as “Soviet Silicon Valley,” was sanctioned by the United States in November 2022, for its illegal procurement of microelectronic components using front companies.

In the statement announcing the 2022 sanctions against Milandr and more than three dozen other entities and individuals, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said, “The United States will continue to expose and disrupt the Kremlin’s military supply chains and deny Russia the equipment and technology it needs to wage its illegal war against Ukraine.”

Karlovskyi said that in Russia’s database of public contracts, Milandr is listed in more than 500 contracts, supplying numerous state-owned and military-grade enterprises, including Ural Optical Mechanical Plant, Concern Avtomatika and Izhevsk Electromechanical Plant, or IEMZ Kupol, which also have been sanctioned by the United States.

“It clearly suggests that this entity is a crucial node in Russia’s military supply chain,” Karlovskyi told VOA.

Novoselov, Milandr’s current director, told Bloomberg News last August that he was not aware of any connections to the Russian military.

“I don’t know any military persons who would be interested in our product,” he told Bloomberg in a phone interview, adding that the company mostly produces electric power meters.

The U.S. allegations are “like a fantasy,” he said. “The United States’ State Department, they suppose that every electronics business in Russia is focused on the military. I think that is funny.”

But a U.S. defense official told VOA that helping Russia’s military kill tens of thousands of people in an illegal invasion “is no laughing matter.”

“The company is fueling microchips for missiles and heavily armored vehicles that are used to continue the war in Ukraine,” said the defense official, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivities of discussing U.S. intelligence.

Milandr’s co-founder Mikhail Pavlyuk was also sanctioned during the summer of 2022 for his involvement in microchip smuggling operations and was caught stealing from Milandr. Pavlyuk fled Russia and has claimed he was not involved.

Officials estimate that 500,000 Ukrainian and Russian troops have been killed or injured in the war, with tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians killed in the fighting.

“There are consequences to their actions, and the U.S. will persist to expose and disrupt the Kremlin’s supply chain,” the U.S. defense official said.
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washington — In recent weeks, the United States, Britain and the European Union have issued the strictest regulations yet on the use and development of artificial intelligence, setting a precedent for other countries.

This month, the United States and the U.K. signed a memorandum of understanding allowing for the two countries to partner in the development of tests for the most advanced artificial intelligence models, following through on commitments made at the AI Safety Summit last November.

These actions come on the heels of the European Parliament’s March vote to adopt its first set of comprehensive rules on AI. The landmark decision sets out a wide-ranging set of laws to regulate this exploding technology.

At the time, Brando Benifei, co-rapporteur on the Artificial Intelligence Act plenary vote, said, “I think today is again an historic day on our long path towards regulation of AI. … The first regulation in the world that is putting a clear path towards a safe and human-centric development of AI.”

The new rules aim to protect citizens from dangerous uses of AI, while exploring its boundless potential.

Beth Noveck, professor of experiential AI at Northeastern University, expressed enthusiasm about the rules.

“It’s really exciting that the EU has passed really the world’s first … binding legal framework addressing AI. It is, however, not the end; it is really just the beginning.”

The new rules will be applied according to risk level: the higher the risk, the stricter the rules.

“It’s not regulating the tech,” she said. “It’s regulating the uses of the tech, trying to prohibit and to restrict and to create controls over the most malicious uses — and transparency around other uses.

“So things like what China is doing around social credit scoring, and surveillance of its citizens, unacceptable.”

Noveck described what she called “high-risk uses” that would be subject to scrutiny. Those include the use of tools in ways that could deprive people of their liberty or within employment.

“Then there are lower risk uses, such as the use of spam filters, which involve the use of AI or translation,” she said. “Your phone is using AI all the time when it gives you the weather; you’re using Siri or Alexa, we’re going to see a lot less scrutiny of those common uses.”

But as AI experts point out, new laws just create a framework for a new model of governance on a rapidly evolving technology.

Dragos Tudorache, co-rapporteur on the AI Act plenary vote, said, “Because AI is going to have an impact that we can’t only measure through this act, we will have to be very mindful of this evolution of the technology in the future and be prepared.”

In late March, the Biden administration issued the first government-wide policy to mitigate the risks of artificial intelligence while harnessing its benefits.

The announcement followed President Joe Biden’s executive order last October, which called on federal agencies to lead the way toward better governance of the technology without stifling innovation.

“This landmark executive order is testament to what we stand for: safety, security, trust, openness,” Biden said at the time,” proving once again that America’s strength is not just the power of its example, but the example of its power.”

Looking ahead, experts say the challenge will be to update rules and regulations as the technology continues to evolve.
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The 2024 New York International Auto Show kicked off in Manhattan in late March — and visitors have until April 7 to admire some of the coolest new car technology. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Michael Eckels.
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