Weaponizing Dependency: Export Controls, Foreign Direct Product Rules, and the Semiconductor Industry

• In Event: 30421 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5. Global Dependencies and their Workings

Abstract

Under what conditions would technological dependency become weaponized by core countries? How do core countries enforce regulations that effectively reshaped the semiconductor industry, providing the fundamental computing power to most emerging technologies, even when the final product is not produced in their territory? This research builds on the two theoretical traditions of dependency theory and weaponizing interdependence and explains how legal and political institutions can be reoriented toward maintaining technological dependency and thus reshaping the development of emerging technologies.
This paper examines the U.S. export control policy, particularly the origin of the Foreign Direct Product Rules (FDPR) in 1959 and its extensive use after 2019 to control the semiconductor industry globally. I argue that although export controls and the FDPR have existed since the Cold War, the growing interdependence of the high-tech industry, the turn toward global disarmament in multilateral export control arrangements, and the militarization of authoritarian regimes through technology all have led to stronger needs from the U.S. to use the FDPR to rapidly and unilaterally achieve control over technological diffusions through technological dependency.
I use archives from U.S. Congressional testimonies, policy documents from U.S. Departments of Commerce and State, and interviews with key policymakers to unpack the historical changes in the U.S. export control policy and the FDPR regulation. This research contributes to studies on technological governance and the development of high-tech industries by bringing back dependency through institutional processes. This research has larger implications for non-core countries in the semiconductor industry. As the semiconductor industry became more complex and securitized, the dependency would not only lead to unequal relationships between states but potentially greater disruptions in the global value chains, while non-core countries would have to walk the tightrope in the dependency-resilience nexus.

Author

• Chris Chih-Hua Tseng, University of California-Irvine