Kyiv’s frustration boils as flow of Western chips for Russian missiles continues uninterrupted
Kyiv’s frustration boils as flow of Western chips for Russian missiles continues uninterrupted
Destroyed apartments, burnt-out cars, lives upturned or extinguished altogether: Russia’s June 13 missile attack on the city of Kryvyi Rih was, in many ways, nothing out of the ordinary for wartime Ukraine. The evening after the attack, which killed 13 civilians, President Volodymyr Zelensky came o...
Destroyed apartments, burnt-out cars, lives upturned or extinguished altogether: Russia’s June 13 missile attack on the city of Kryvyi Rih was, in many ways, nothing out of the ordinary for wartime Ukraine. The evening after the attack, which killed 13 civilians, President Volodymyr Zelensky came out in his daily
The article doesn't talk about what chips are involved.
It's probably possible to control chips that are specialized and have few users. But other things are probably impractical.
I remember a RUSI report talking about a teardown of one missile and it mentioned voltage regulator chips. Those are everywhere, in all kinds of products. If a new company buys a bunch in China and it turns out that it's a shell company moving them to Russia, there's not a lot you can do, as there's no great way to distinguish them from legitimate users in advance -- there are loads of those. It's like trying to control screws or nails. You can maybe cut off one company if you trace chips back to one, but a bunch of other companies that look indistinguishable from legitimate small companies can be set up in the meantime.
If it's a chip used only in, I don't know, infrared homing systems, then that's probably a lot more practical to place a high bar to access on.
I recall hearing from some guy in the opposition of Kazakhstan(Russia's neighbour) that the import of household technologies, such as washing machines and similar appliances, has increased 3000% since the start of the war.
Honestly, I doubt that Russia even needs to do that -- buying a whole appliance just to get some chips, or even just recovering parts from things being scrapped already in Russia, is probably an expensive way to get them, creates an unnecessary degree of obfuscation.
I remember reading -- I can't recall if it was the RUSI report mentioned above or a later one -- talking about some of the chips that had wound up in Russia, and both of the specific cases that they talked about were kinda sketchy Chinese companies operating out of Hong Kong.
googles
This isn't it, but broader overview:
https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/05/17/hong-kong-s-technology-lifeline-to-russia-pub-89775
While China’s support for Russia is widely reported, Hong Kong’s substantial contributions to Russia’s war efforts are less known. Recent reports have identified Hong Kong as a prominent node in Russia’s illicit procurement network, acting as a transshipment hub for diverting Western-made microelectronic components to companies affiliated with the Russian military.3 Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Hong Kong has doubled its integrated circuits exports to around $400 million worth of semiconductors in 2022, second only to China and far exceeding any third country in the volume of semiconductor trade with Russia.4 Many of these transactions violate U.S. export control regulations against Russia, and multiple individuals and entities operating from Hong Kong have been sanctioned for their involvement in the Russian military’s procurement network.5
Numerous reports indicate that despite sweeping Western sanctions, Russia’s defense industrial base has successfully established alternative routes to import dual-use components needed for manufacturing military equipment.6 Lacking scalable domestic substitutes, Russia relies on foreign-made microelectronic components to produce a range of military gear, including weapons like drones and cruise missiles.7 Examining Russian weapons captured in Ukraine, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) discovered in August 2022 that the majority of microchip components in Russian systems originated from the United States, East Asia, and Western Europe.8 Tracing the supply chain of microelectronics, RUSI concluded that “third-country transshipment hubs and clandestine networks operated by Russia’s special services are now working to build new routes to secure access to Western microelectronics.”9
A leader in low-end microchip manufacturing and the world’s top chip importer, China is now the foremost supplier of semiconductors to Russia. In 2022, as Western countries restricted technology supply, Russia’s semiconductor imports from China skyrocketed, jumping from $200 million in 2021 to well over $500 million in 2022, according to Russian customs data analyzed by the Free Russia Foundation.10 Importantly, the Sino-Russian technology trade involves not only Chinese-made components but also products manufactured by top U.S. chipmakers such as Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and Texas Instruments. Nikkei Asia recently reported that exports of U.S. chips from Hong Kong and China to Russia increased tenfold between 2021 and 2022, reaching about $570 million worth.11 By one figure, China and Hong Kong together accounted for nearly 90 percent of global chip exports to Russia in the period between March and December 2022.12
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Intel Inside?