US Needs ‘Brain Trust’ to Advise on Chip Export Controls, Think Tank Says

The U.S. may need new industry advisory committees to help it implement and maintain its semiconductor export controls against China, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a recent report.

The report, which covers a range of other issues surrounding the U.S. chip export restrictions, said there is currently no “central standing body of relevant expertise and data gathering and analytic capability” to advise the Commerce and Defense departments in real time on export control issues. Those issues sometimes include “highly technical U.S. policy decisions,” including on export licensing approvals and denials.

CSIS said some federal agencies, including Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, have “extensive expertise in specific aspects of semiconductor technology” that may be able to help with licensing issues. But it can be difficult for Commerce and the Pentagon to “access this knowledge in a comprehensive manner to assess export licensing requests in real time.”

The authors of the report -- CSIS experts Sujai Shivakumar and Charles Wessner and trade lawyer Thomas Howell -- said the U.S. should take inspiration from a group of chip industry experts that was formed in the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, Sematech, a non-profit chip research group, brought together scientists and engineers to “develop a technology road map for the semiconductor industry,” and CSIS said the effort “succeeded beyond all expectations.”

But the body fizzled after the U.S. government stopped supporting it, and it didn’t lead to a “permanent advisory body that could provide technical semiconductor expertise to the government," CSIS said. Still, the working groups that “flourished under Sematech’s auspices remain a possible model or starting point for an effective U.S. chip advisory brain trust."