President Biden's pending executive order – supported by G-7 Nations to curb investment in the Chinese economy – is a sound strategy to handle difficult political questions about Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), Quantum Computing, and semiconductor chips. Suppose it is to meaningfully solve some of the most vexing questions about the future of global economies. In that case, however, the reported measures of the order miss a significant avenue for China to access US-developed technology in open-source technology that undermines the intent of this and related national security actions.
That should be cause for concern for American policymakers. It will indeed prove difficult to police the complex and global supply chain system. But given the importance – it is a national security tool to choke off funding for advancements in China's military – America and its allies cannot lock the front door while leaving the back door wide open. A real national strategy on open-source chip infrastructure is needed – and it is needed now.
This is not an academic discussion: China knows this backdoor exists and is already taking action to capitalize on this strategic weakness. Beijing's desire to be independent of the rest of the world on semiconductor development, and the world's desire to insulate it, has pushed Beijing to an open-source chip architecture called RISC-V as a currently unregulated alternative to Western commercial technology.
China is investing heavily in RISC-V, with the aim of becoming less dependent on foreign technology. In fact, China has made a public commitment to wean itself off the $200B+ it spends annually on semiconductor imports.China intends to spend $150B on this mission, building design, and manufacturing capabilities over the next ten years.
It is worth considering RISC-V within this context. Because it is open source, any company in China, Russia, or elsewhere can currently access the technology to develop a semiconductor product – and it is a way for China to access highly advanced semiconductor blueprints that the Biden administration is trying to keep out of its hands.
So as China invests more in RISC-V technology and leading Chinese companies announce plans to invest in and make greater use of the technology, there is a legitimate concern that it will start gaining on the market. Hence, U.S. policymakers will lose the ability to regulate it, further exacerbating the already tense trade and geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and China.
Additionally, RISC-V's open-source nature could make it easier for China to reverse-engineer the technology and expose U.S. products to Chinese manipulation – even though RISC-V was developed in U.S. universities and initially funded by the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Special Competitive Studies Project Senior Fellow Rick Switzer, a national security expert, recently exposed that this is already underway. In short, AT&T's recent 5G network expansion is made up of 250,000 to 300,000 routers. All of these are being produced by companies in Taiwan and China on open-source technology.
Switzer goes on to warn that, "These routers will eventually form the infrastructure that will enable not just phones and tablets to connect to its mobile 5G network, but also new technologies like autonomous vehicles, drones, augmented reality and virtual reality systems, smart factories, and more." That it is open source, he says, "creates new attack vectors that are more difficult to resolve."
Of course, none of this is a reason to turn back the clock to economic isolationism. Far from it. It is just a way to illustrate that a changing technological landscape presents new security risks and that the only way to mitigate those risks is to prepare for them. Right now, the U.S. appears unprepared for the national security threats posed by open-source chip technology, which may be so severe that they undermine the industrial policies of both the Trump and Biden administrations to keep advanced U.S. technology out of the hands of Chinese companies and, ultimately, the Chinese military.
That is bad news for all Americans, but there is still time for the Biden administration to wise up. By taking this threat seriously now, the Biden administration and its allies worldwide can help further kneecap China's military capabilities – and we cannot afford to delay.
