American chip manufacturers testified in the Senate about why their products are found in Russian missiles

About why American chips and electronics are found in Russian weapons seized on the battlefield in Ukraine, US senators spoke with leading American companies – manufacturers of microelectronics.

Vice presidents of ADM, Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, and Intel Corporation testified at the hearing “Technologies of US companies feed the Russian war machine” in the US Senate on September 10.

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal chaired the hearing and spoke about documents given to him by Ukrainian authorities detailing nearly 25,000 components recovered from Russian weapons on the battlefield.

“The vast majority of this – 73% – from American companies. As we established, 1005 – 40%, come from your companies,” – Blumenthal addressed the witnesses.

The senator recalled the Russian attack on Okhmatdit: “On July 8 of this year, a Russian cruise missile hit the largest children’s hospital in Kyiv, killing dozens of doctors and children, severely injuring many. This missile was made in Russia, but the technology in it was American.”

Violation of sanctions?

Blumenthal’s statement that the system of compliance with export restrictions by companies “is more like a sieve than a barrier” was rejected by a senator from the Republican Party Ron Johnson.

He put the blame on the administration of the US president Joe Biden in the creation of an “inefficient system of sanctions”. Johnson urged not to put the blame for the ineffectiveness of sanctions on the companies, but to focus efforts on ending the war.

“This war needs to be stopped,” Johnson says. “This war should not have started and could have ended much earlier through negotiations. We need to focus on that and not punish private companies that are facing a difficult enough task that they did not expect.” .

Representatives of the companies emphasized that they comply with the sanctions and introduce precautions on their own initiative, even if it is not required by law, so that their goods do not get into Russian weapons.

Representatives of the companies present indicated that most of the components that, according to their data, were found on the battlefield in Ukraine are basic microchips that are not subject to export restrictions and were produced before the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

“What we’re seeing being found on the battlefield are dual-use items that are not subject to export restrictions or export administrative regulations (EARs). These are very basic-level items,” said the vice president of Analog Devices. Michelle Stout. The components are very basic and “we produce tens of billions of components every year, they are extremely common,” she added Shannon Thompson from Texas Instruments.

Similar assessments were shared by AMD’s vice president Tiffany Scarrywhich indicated that the chips and images of their company’s components they receive from the NGO Conflict Armament Research Group and investigative journalists from the battlefield “are very old, at least when it comes to AMD products.” “We haven’t found new chips yet, only pre-sanctions ones,” Scarry says, adding that those components are 5-15 years old.

Vice President of Intel Jeff Rittner confirms: “In each case, the goods that we see the message about and that we see in the photo are old. They are 5-10 years old.”

In response, Blumenthal expressed doubt that the new chips do not reach Russia, and referred to Ukrainian information: “The Ukrainian authorities gave me 900 pages of documents. They told me: ‘These are new chips.’ These are new electronics, new technologies. The Russians don’t rely on 15-year-old chips to make their most advanced, deadliest hypersonic missiles, for example.”

He urged companies not only to respond to requests to track this or that microchip, but to send delegations to Ukraine to investigate the evidence themselves. “I would like you to look at these documents, to send teams over there, not to tell me what you think based on just a few tracking requests,” Blumenthal said.

Checks: too many or too few?

Blumenthal called on US companies to take on additional obligations to increase control over the supply of microchips, as well as audit sales through other countries, such as Turkey, Kazakhstan, Georgia, the number of transactions through which has increased.

Representatives of the companies assured that they carry out regular inspections of compliance with export restrictions, including the data of their distributors. Regarding circumvention of restrictions through other countries, Intel, AMD, Analog indicated that they have strengthened the supervision of sales to high-risk countries, from where the arrival of chips to Russia has increased. TI points out that the company has not found any evidence that their goods are going to Russia.

Johnson expressed doubt that increased auditing would be effective.

But Elina Rybakova, a researcher at the Kyiv School of Economics, who testified in the Senate in previous hearings on this topic in February, believes that the increase in audits is insufficient.

“The obligation of American companies to start auditing their distributors is not enough. Putin is a threat to American security,” the researcher tweeted.

Blumenthal concluded: these and previous hearings in the US Senate have forced companies in the US to pay more attention to cooperation with non-governmental organizations that detect US-made components in Russian weapons found on the battlefield in Ukraine.