WASHINGTON—The Biden administration on Thursday barred U.S. companies from supplying Chinese entities it said were building supercomputers to help Beijing develop new weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear devices.
The action, which will block sales of advanced U.S. semiconductors among other products, represents a further toughening of U.S. technology trade restrictions amid an increasingly adversarial relationship with China.
The U.S. “will use the full extent of its authorities to prevent China from leveraging U.S. technologies to support these destabilizing military modernization efforts,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a written statement.
The Chinese embassy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We expect China will react to this in some way,” said Paul Triolo, head of global technology policy at Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy. He described Thursday’s move as a further “weaponizing” of the U.S. supply chain in its growing competition with China.
