More than 5% of equipment and materials supplied to US chipmakers originate in China, which also possesses some 90% of the rare earths required to manufacture semiconductors, a new report showed.
The figures highlight the structural reliance of US tech on China, and the difficulties of erecting a materials and software firewall against Beijing. “We’re so deeply intertwined,” Brookings’ AI specialist Kyle Chan told The Washington Post: “There’s a lot of actual dependency.”
Beyond materials, the US tech startup ecosystem also relies on cheaper, open-source Chinese AI, so much that when the Trump administration considered banning it, nearly 300 US firms spoke out — marking “the moment open intelligence itself becomes a geopolitical dependency,” an analyst wrote.
