Global powers regard the local supply capacity of chips as a national security issue, which drives the semiconductor manufacturing industry to be more dispersed and reduces the risk of over-concentration of production areas. On March 23, Pat Gelsinger, CEO of semiconductor giant Intel (Intel), accepted an interview with the media and compared chips to oil, which is an important bargaining chip in contemporary international political relations.
CNBC reported that in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on the 23rd, Kissinger said that in the past 50 years, oil reserves have affected global geopolitical issues, and entering the digital age, the location of fabs will also become the power behind the game of global powers Therefore, Intel will accelerate its global layout and return its chip manufacturing capabilities, which are highly concentrated in Asia, to Europe and the United States.
The report pointed out that fabs specialize in semiconductor wafer manufacturing and production. At present, most of the global wafers are manufactured in Asia, with Taiwan having the highest market share. But China has long claimed Taiwan’s sovereignty and threatened to use force to unify the island, and the outside world has begun to worry that the excessive concentration of the chip industry in Taiwan, where political risks are high, is not a good thing.
In February 2021, after taking over as CEO of Intel, Ji Singer actively promoted the geographical diversity of chip manufacturing, and planned to invest heavily in the construction of new fabs in the United States and Europe, and enter the foundry business to compete with Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung. Dominance of Asian chip makers such as Samsung Electronics.
Elon Musk’s ties to China have sparked unease in Washington, including some Republican lawmakers who have been zealous in supporting the billionaire, the Wall Street Journal reported on March 20. Republican Rep. Chris Stewart said he was a fan of Musk and SpaceX, but any financial entanglement with China would be a concern. Republican Senator Marco Rubio, referring to Tesla Inc.’s China operations, said any business operating in China would be pressured and exploited by the Chinese Communist Party.
US House Minority Leader (Kevin McCarthy) spokesman Matt Sparks said that Tesla and SpaceX are great American companies, and Musk is one of America’s greatest innovators and a true patriot. Sparks said there is absolutely no indication that Tesla or SpaceX is being forced to do any kind of technology transfer.
Musk: Will not unconditionally support everything China does Tencent Holdings Ltd acquired a 5% stake in Tesla for $1.78 billion in March 2017. Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted at the time that he was happy to see Tencent as an investor and advisor to Tesla.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit host Joanna Stern in December 2021, Musk said that Tesla has a good relationship with China, but he will not unconditionally support everything China does, just as he will not support unreservedly America or any country.
Musk said in a video talk to the “2021 World New Energy Vehicle Conference” last September that Chinese automakers are very competitive, especially some manufacturers have done very well in the software part.
Musk tweeted in September 2017 that China, Russia, and all countries with strong computer science capabilities will compete for artificial intelligence (AI) dominance, and such a national competition is likely to be the most likely outcome of World War 3. Main fuse.
Will Tesla become an AI robot company in the future? Musk tweeted in 2017 that he thought AI could outperform humans in 2030-2040.
He Xiaopeng, chief executive of XPeng Inc., said in an interview last September that all automakers will become robotics companies within 10-30 years, CNBC reported.
The Washington Post reported that Musk said at Artificial Intelligence Day last August that if Tesla doesn’t make robots, other companies will.
Tesla closed higher for the fourth consecutive trading day, rising 3.88% to close at $905.39 on March 18, a new closing high since February 16; a weekly increase of 13.84%, a record since the week of December 23, 2021 maximum increase.
Due to the tense situation on the Sino-Indian border, India has banned hundreds of Chinese apps in the past two years. Recently, India has banned 54 Chinese apps. Many Tencent, Alibaba and NetEase products, including the game developer Garena of Shopee parent company Donghai Group The mobile game “I want to live” (Free Fire) was also blocked.
The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs issued the latest guidelines on the 14th, suggesting that the Ministry of Science and Technology ban 54 Chinese apps, because of suspected access to sensitive information of Indian users, the most concerned is Garena’s game app.
According to analytics firm App Annie, I’m Living has more than 1 billion downloads on Google Play, with more than 40 million global monthly active users in India. The largest shareholder of Donghai Group is Chinese media giant Tencent. Still, the blockade took the Garena team by surprise.
India began a series of app bans in late June 2020, when it banned TikTok, WeChat, Alibaba UC browser and dozens of other China-related apps out of national security concerns. In response to most of the bans, the New Delhi government believes that the way the apps compile, mine and analyze user data poses a risk to India’s national security and defense.
The Indian government has banned more than 300 China-related apps in the past year and a half, including the hit game PUBG, but it is also the only known app that has somehow returned to India’s Google Play and App Store.
On February 9, local time, Dutch lithography giant ASML announced in its 2021 financial report that Chinese enterprise Dong Fang Jing Yuan Electron (DFJY) is actively selling in China, which could potentially infringe the company. intellectual property products. The Orient Jingyuan affiliate XTAL mentioned by ASML was convicted by a US court in 2019 of infringing ASML’s intellectual property rights.
According to a report by China Observer on February 11, ASML China said that the matter was related to XTAL’s previous infringement case and was a normal disclosure in the annual report. ASML is closely monitoring the developments of Dongfang Jingyuan and has not yet prepared to take legal measures, but if there is conclusive evidence, the company will resort to the law.
According to the information disclosed in ASML’s financial report, the company learned in early 2021 that a company related to XTAL is actively promoting products in China that may infringe ASML’s intellectual property rights. In 2019, XTAL was accused of stealing ASML in the United States. trade secrets were awarded compensation. In response, ASML has told customers not to assist the Chinese company named “Oriental Crystal Source” to engage in such potential infringements. ASML also revealed that the company has informed the Chinese regulatory authorities about relevant information and is closely monitoring Monitor the situation and be prepared to take legal action when appropriate.
The full name of Orient Crystal Source Microelectronics Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. was established in 2014 and is headquartered in Beijing Yizhuang Economic and Technological Development Zone, focusing on integrated circuit yield management. Yizhuang SDIC has disclosed that Oriental Crystal Source is invested and controlled by Oriental Group, a top 500 enterprise in China, and Oriental Group is a large-scale investment holding private enterprise established in 1978.
From the perspective of specific business, Dongfang Jingyuan’s main products are nano-scale electron beam defect inspection equipment (EBI) and critical dimension measurement equipment (CD-SEM), computational lithography products (OPC) and microelectronics design and manufacturing intelligent yield rate Optimization Platform (HPOTM). The company said that its products are independently developed and are at the leading domestic level, which can effectively solve many difficulties in the domestic integrated circuit industry.
Asmar’s official website shows that in addition to lithography machines, the company’s products also include computational lithography for improving wafer yield and quality. “Without computational lithography, it would be impossible for chip manufacturers to manufacture the latest technology. node”.
A senior person in the semiconductor industry said that in the lithography process, the diffraction of light and the physical and chemical effects in the photosensitive layer will deform the image that the lithography machine is trying to engrave, so computational lithography needs to be calibrated and optimized. To put it simply, computational lithography is similar to the algorithm in EDA. It is a service that fabs need to purchase. If the exposure pattern is different from the actual mask (Mask), the mask can be corrected in advance through computational lithography to ensure the desired result. graphics. Generally speaking, if the fab feels that ASML’s computational lithography is not good enough, it can also choose a product provided by a third party, and the two will form a competition.
In addition to accusing Orient Jingyuan of possible infringement this time, ASML specifically mentioned that Orient Jingyuan and XTAL are related, and the intellectual property dispute between ASML and XTAL occurred several years ago.
In May 2016, ASML sued the US company XTAL in the US court, accusing XTAL of stealing some source codes and intellectual property rights of ASML’s US subsidiary Brion, and claiming that XTAL induced and abetted ASML employees to keep secrets before leaving work for it.
According to the official introduction, Brion is the proponent of the concept of computational lithography. The company was acquired by ASML in 2007. XTAL, founded in 2014 by two former Brion employees, is dedicated to improving yields in the semiconductor manufacturing process, which also includes computational lithography. According to foreign media reports at the time, XTAL developed rapidly after its establishment, and ASML began to have doubts about XTAL after losing a contract with a key customer.
The allegations filed by ASML in the court allege that a year after the founding of XTAL, two ASML employees resigned to join the company and that the two employees copied Brion’s trade secrets onto storage devices and took them away to facilitate XTAL’s business, and they subsequently stole confidential information with two former colleagues who were still at Brion.
During the trial of this case, the Dutch media “Financieele Dagblad” reported that all six employees involved in XTAL’s case had Chinese names, and XTAL was a subsidiary of the Chinese company Dongfang Jingyuan. As a result, the media claimed that the infringement case was related to the Chinese government, and that ASML’s technology might fall into the hands of China, a so-called “state espionage”.
As soon as this statement came out, Asmar took the lead in expressing his opposition.
In April 2019, the company issued an official statement saying that XTAL and its former employees were aiming to enrich themselves with stolen trade secrets and intellectual property, and that ASML found no evidence of any direct involvement by the Chinese government. “We are dissatisfied with any suggestion that this case will affect ASML’s operations in China. Some of them happen to be Chinese nationals, but there are also people from other countries involved.”
Lu Kang, the then Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, pointed out that China and the Netherlands have always maintained good cooperation in the field of science and technology. We have reiterated many times that the Chinese government attaches great importance to intellectual property protection. We have always required overseas Chinese citizens and enterprises to abide by the laws of their host countries. As for China itself, China’s scientific and technological development does not depend on stealing or robbing. It is the result of the Chinese people’s hard work and hard work with their own wisdom and sweat.
Peter Wen, CEO of ASML, said in a statement that the company was encouraged by China’s commitment to respecting and protecting the intellectual property rights of non-Chinese companies.
The Dutch company did not mention the existence of a relationship between XTAL and Dongfang Jingyuan at the time. But the company disclosed that the funding behind XTAL came from China and South Korea, and the goal was to create a competing product to sell to ASML’s customers in South Korea. ASML also revealed that XTAL stole software for mask optimization, a business that is separate from ASML’s main business and accounts for less than 1% of the company’s annual revenue. “Therefore, the media’s claim that ASML’s core technology has been affected is not in line with the facts.”
The U.S. Department of Justice has accused Hytera, a major communications company in various countries, of conspiring with former employees of Motorola Solutions to steal Motorola’s digital mobile radio technology (DMR). At present, the U.S. Department of Justice has filed a complaint against Hytera, including a total of 21 criminal charges including conspiracy to steal trade secrets.
According to the indictment against Hytera released by the federal court in Chicago, Illinois, on the 7th, Motorola has developed digital mobile radio technology after years of design and research. During the period from 2007 to 2020, Hytera recruited former Motorola employees through generous salaries and benefits, and instructed them to obtain proprietary commercial confidential information about digital mobile radio technology from Motorola through “unauthorized” methods, in order to speed up the process. Hytera-related product development, training of Hytera’s employees, and marketing and sales of Hytera’s DMR products worldwide.
The U.S. Department of Justice said the indictment charges Hytera on 21 criminal counts including conspiracy to steal trade secrets. If Hytera is convicted, it could face a fine of three times the value of the trade secrets stolen, including research, design and other related costs.
In this regard, Mark Hacker, executive vice president of Motorola Solutions, pointed out that the U.S. Department of Justice’s charges against Hytera reflect that these illegal actions were carefully planned, and will continue to file lawsuits against Hytera globally in the future to prevent the company from continuing infringement. Hytera expressed disappointment and disapproval of the allegations made by the US Department of Justice.
Jason Tech & Finance News 
You must be logged in to post a comment.