Suffice to say the working relationship between the U.S. and China is strained. Like two friends who just found out that one friend strongly detests the other friend’s “personality,” the two nations have been at odds for the last several months.
President Trump strongly believes that that US entered into a “bad deal” with China and this has resulted in the loss of American jobs. In response to his upset, Trump has imposed billions of dollars in tariffs on Chinese goods. Because we export very little of American-made goods to China, this creates what Trump and the media have referred to as a “trade deficit.” So, all details above have resulted in the U.S. and China are at odds with one another.
Matters only got worse when U.S. authorities accused a Chinese state-owned company with colluding to steal industry secrets from the U.S. largest memory-chip maker, Micron Technology Inc (MICR), according to an indictment on Thursday. The U.S. Justice Department filed indictment charges against two companies in China and Taiwan, and three separate individuals, Reuters reported.
The two tech companies in question, United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) and Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit, Co., Ltd represent the fourth legal action taken by the Justice Department in terms of suspected Chinese espionage. Micron (MICR), the Idaho-based semiconductor company is currently worth around $100 billion and, according to market analysts, has a “20-25% share of the dynamic random access memory industry.”
For those of you who associate random access memory (RAM) with that one album by Daft Punk, let me briefly explain. Inside your computer, millions of different things are happening at once. Information is stored on your hard drive and then processed by your computer processor, but its far too slow for a computer to handle and process data directly from the hard drive, so that’s where RAM comes in. Data is temporarily stored in RAM while being processed and used.
Earlier in October, Bloomberg Business reported that Chinese hackers had implanted microchips, “as small as the tip of a sharpened pencil,” designed to be virtually undetectable, into the data centers of over thirty tech companies. The hackers implanted their microchips into “servers used by numerous data centers of such U.S. corporate giants like Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN), as well as banks, hedge funds, and government contractors.
The spy chips in question, which officials proved were, in fact, quite inedible, were sold by Super Micro Computer, an information tech company based in San Jose, California.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced plans for a new initiative to respond to recent efforts by Chinese hackers and spies to steal American technology and trade secrets. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was a teaser for a new “National Treasure” starring Nicholas Cage. Attorney General Sessions openly criticized the Chinese government for allowing its people to violate an Obama-era accord in which both governments agreed to do everything in their powers to stop cyber attacks between the two countries.
“In 2015, China committed publicly that it would not target American companies for economic gain. Obviously, that commitment has not been kept. Chinese economic espionage against the United States has been increasing — and it has been increasing rapidly. Enough is enough, we’re not going to take it anymore.”
–U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions
Jinhua Integrated Circuit, the state-backed Chinese semiconductor manufacturer, is in deep with the U.S. given that earlier this week, the US Commerce Department announced that Fujian Jinhua would no longer be able to buy components from American companies without a special license, according to CNN reports. The export ban was enacted because Fujian Jinhua “poses a significant risk of becoming involved in activities that are contrary to the national security interests of the United States, the agency told CNN.
The Trump administration and officials from the U.S. Justice Department firmly believe that China will stop at nothing to steal corporate secrets from American companies, and the indictment of United Microelectronics (UMC) and Fujian Jinhua demonstrates this fear.
Tech stocks,technology stocks, technology stocks to buy,tech stocks to buy, technology stock news, tech news,technology news, investing, investor, news, top tech stocks, list of tech stocks, top tech stocks, best tech stocks, best technology stocks, best technology stocks, tech stock news, technology
