A look at Biden's efforts to partner with allies to boost key tech sectors and counter China, going beyond Trump-era measures like restricting sales of SMIC
a “choke point technology”—to China. Beijing has plenty of ways to retaliate. https://www.wsj.com/... @baldingsworld : At the risk of pointing out that journalists again don't know what they are talking about. These type of talks have been taking place for some time but why let the PR narrative you are given to push go to waste right? https://www.wsj.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The internal Trump White House debate over restricting China's tech access ended in unilateral moves like the sales curbs on SMIC — controls one government could impose and one target country could plan around. The Biden approach reported here changes the unit of action: instead of solo choke-point bans, Washington seeks allied agreement on which 'choke point' technologies to withhold while jointly building up key sectors at home.
The shift matters because the retaliation playbook is already on record: after the first round of Trump bans, [[a:942583|China summoned US and global tech giants to warn of dire consequences and hint that American companies should lobby against the measures]], and by late 2020 Beijing had sped up work on a blacklist that could punish US tech firms. A wider coalition narrows China's room to route around controls — and widens the surface it can retaliate against.
First-order effects
- SMIC and other Chinese chipmakers face the prospect of restrictions enforced by a coalition rather than a single jurisdiction, closing off the workaround of sourcing controlled inputs through non-US suppliers.
- US allies are put on the spot immediately: joining means accepting lost China revenue for their equipment and chip firms, declining means Washington may act alone anyway.
Second-order effects
- Multinationals caught between the two capitals resume the middleman role documented during the Trump bans — pressed by Beijing to lobby against controls at home, including through channels like the Bureau of Industry and Security where lawmakers and lobbyists were already working the agency.
- Beijing's prepared countermeasures — the retaliatory blacklist and pressure campaigns against US tech firms — scale from targeting one administration's measures to contesting an entire allied framework.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the industry splits along alliance lines into two partially incompatible technology stacks, with 'choke point' designations — not market demand — deciding which tools and chips flow where.
- Enforcement becomes the structural battleground: as later reporting shows, the US struggles to distinguish military-usable from commercial technology, so the line between a security measure and an export ban gets litigated continuously inside agencies and among allies.
The trend: US–China technology competition is moving from unilateral export controls toward allied coalitions managing choke-point technologies, with each expansion of control matched by more institutionalized Chinese countermeasures.