72 points by mikhael 8 hours ago | 44 comments
Aloha 5 hours ago
Have a part made in Japan, integrated into a product in the states but sold by someone in the UK to in France? you'll have to comply with Japan, US and UK laws.
Neat fact, the UK considers the Cisco C9200 switch to be a munition, because it has ipsec.
ArchOversight 5 hours ago
> Encryption items specifically designed, developed, configured, adapted or modified for military applications (including command, control and intelligence applications) are controlled by the Department of State on the United States Munitions List.
It was part of the whole crypto wars, and the lawsuit brought by Bernstein vs the United States.
See more:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
Aloha 3 hours ago
ycombinatrix 2 hours ago
ChrisMarshallNY 1 hour ago
In New York, the Mob likes to control trucking and rail transport, because it allows them to get their fingers into anyone’s business.
Very easy to have a truck make a 20-minute detour into a hidden depot, where the contents are “inspected.” I know folks that used to work for those types of outfits, and the stories I’ve heard, tell me that the wiseguys are very smart. They know how to get around pretty much any tracking and verification system.
The more people have their hands on the product, the more likely it is to “fall off the truck.”
kube-system 2 hours ago
MichaelZuo 2 hours ago
kube-system 2 hours ago
Consider the OP's example:
> Have a part made in Japan, integrated into a product in the states but sold by someone in the UK to in France? you'll have to comply with Japan, US and UK laws.
The reason all countries tediously ensure their laws are being followed is because, if they weren't, there'd be an obvious legal loophole: you could simply proxy export items to a country with different export restrictions -- and then all export restrictions would be worthless.
MichaelZuo 1 hour ago
Having strict, slightly differing restrictions doesn’t seem to add anything extra of value? It’s pure downsides.
tonetegeatinst 3 hours ago
m3kw9 6 hours ago
j_walter 6 hours ago
0xTJ 6 hours ago
londons_explore 5 hours ago
Due to the way lithography works, it isn't easy to make each die different. The usual way to put serial numbers into chips is with efuses, but not all chips have any efuses at all, and it would require collaboration with the customer to design a way that they be programmed and read (probably on a JTAG chain).
ddingus 4 hours ago
Either one time fuses and some software, or via directed beam energy fusible or breakable links.
Edit, yeah like the other comment suggested.
j_walter 5 hours ago
wiml 5 hours ago
iphoneisbetter 6 hours ago
throawayonthe 2 hours ago
DiogenesKynikos 6 hours ago
> It is unclear how the chip made its way to Huawei. In 2019, the company released its Ascend 910 chip series. At the time, prior to export controls, the chips were produced by TSMC, two sources told Reuters earlier this year.
The question of why the US has the right or power to tell TSMC, a Taiwanese company, who it is allowed to do business often comes up in these discussions. I've often seen the response that this is US technology, and that any country would apply similar controls to its own technologies. What I don't think people realize is that these sorts of "secondary" controls are very unusual, internationally.
The US imposes controls on goods manufactured abroad using US-made tools or intellectual property. This is a bit like the way that the GPL "infects" other projects, and forces them to abide by its terms, and to my knowledge, the US is the only country that does this (in any case, it's the only country doing this on such a large scale). If you think of how integrated the world economy is, these sorts of "infectious" controls are extremely disruptive.
burnte 6 hours ago
j_walter 5 hours ago
joshuaissac 4 hours ago
It's actually China, where sales account for 29% of global semiconductor sales, compared to 26% for the Americas (NA & SA).
https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/SI... (PDF)
oskarkk 2 hours ago
newprint 2 hours ago
DiogenesKynikos 4 hours ago
The world economy is tightly interconnected, so almost any economic activity anywhere on Earth has at least some incidental, indirect connection to the US (and to China, and to the EU). Imposing such a wide-ranging secondary sanctions regime is extremely disruptive, and it's viewed by other countries as an attack on their sovereignty. When Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, he effectively forced the EU to also renege on the deal, because US sanctions banned virtually every EU company from doing business with Iran. The EU could no longer determine its own trade and foreign policy with Iran.
The answer to this is probably for other countries that want to retain their sovereignty to impose retaliatory sanctions on the US when it targets their companies. The EU is not sufficiently politically unified to do this, though, and most other countries/blocs (except for China) don't have the heft to go one-on-one against the US.
UltraSane 1 hour ago
I wouldn't hold your breath.
rescbr 1 hour ago
US Dollar hegemony. If a company is banned doing business in USD, no large banks will want to touch them.
threeseed 4 hours ago
These are legal mechanisms that dictate the behaviour of companies and are routinely imposed even when the company has no presence in the country. It is extremely common in the financial sectors e.g. AML/KYC.
Right now the EU for example has sanctions against Russia and Chinese entities.
DiogenesKynikos 4 hours ago
Other countries impose sanctions, but "secondary" sanctions are very unusual. I don't know of any other country that imposes secondary sanctions on anywhere near the scale that the United States does. It is extremely unusual for countries other than the US to try to impose their own sanctions regimes on foreign companies operating outside their territory, based only on extremely incidental connections (like use of software written in the country imposing sanctions).
threeseed 40 minutes ago
And China has used secondary sanctions to prevent support for Taiwan.
Either way majority of US secondary sanctions has been for enforcing AML/KYC which other countries simply leverage instead of imposing their own system.
salawat 2 hours ago
kube-system 2 hours ago
8note 1 hour ago
riehwvfbk 18 minutes ago