“If you’re at whatever layer of NAND, we will stop it somewhere in that range,” Estevez said, referring to a flash memory product manufactured by Samsung and SK. He added that the U.S. government was in deep dialogue with the South Korean chipmakers.
“We work with them to ensure that we aren’t going to harm our allies’ companies. At the same time, we’re going to impede the Chinese capability of building capabilities that are going to threaten us collectively,” he said.Samsung and SK Hynix, which control about half of the global NAND flash memory chip market, have invested heavily in China in recent decades to produce chips that are vital to customers including tech giants Apple, and Amazon.
Earlier, an American official acknowledged the existence of a deal with Japan and the Netherlands for those countries to impose new restrictions on exports of chipmaking tools to China.Subscribe to our daily newsletter