#semiconductors

#semiconductors

China will present the greatest challenge to the UK's overseas interests and economic security by 2030, according to an intelligence chief.Adrian Bird, the Chief of Defence Intelligence, said the UK must be alive to the challenges posed by China as it seeks to disrupt supplies of key technologies and materials, with an increasing threat from its military and spies.

Rishi Sunak will unveil a new agreement with Japan to foster closer defence, security and cyber ties amid growing concerns about the threat from China.Visiting Tokyo, the Prime Minister will commit to deploying a naval battle fleet in the Indo-Pacific in 2025 and to double UK troop numbers in upcoming joint exercises.

Car production has increased following an easing of a two-year long shortage of semiconductors, figures show.The number of cars built in UK factories reached 69,707 last month, over 8,000 more than the same month a year ago, said the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).The report noted an improvement in supply chain shortages notably of semiconductors which have bedevilled the global industry since early 2021.

Demand for new green cars soared by nearly three-quarters last year amid a spike in sales of electric models.The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said 31,220 new cars were registered in that colour in 2022.That was the most in 16 years and represented a 74.2% increase on the previous 12 months.

Demand for new green cars soared by nearly three-quarters last year amid a spike in sales of electric models.The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said 31,220 new cars were registered in that colour in 2022.That was the most in 16 years and represented a 74.2% increase on the previous 12 months.

Just as it did for nearly every facet of the global economy, the pandemic plunged Canada's new car market into upheaval, throwing supply and demand completely out of whack.Factory shutdowns due to COVID-19 made for widespread shortages of parts, filtering down to a historic lack of finished vehicles for sale on dealer lots.

Japanese businesses are committing to invest nearly 18bn in the UK, Rishi Sunak has announced as he meets the bosses of major firms in Tokyo.The prime minister said the pledges are a massive vote of confidence in the British economy after he painted an optimistic outlook for the national finances.It comes as Mr Sunak has ordered talks with the EU about automotive industry concerns following warnings of an existential threat posed by a looming Brexit trade deal deadline.

Battery makers from China are rapidly expanding in Europe, responding to a growing market for electric vehicles while bucking an overall contraction in Chinese investment on the continent.Mostly shunned from North America because of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which seeks to reduce American companies' dependence on China's supply chain, battery makers in China have instead focused on Europe, the world's second-largest market for electric vehicles.

General Motors has reached an agreement with a large computer chip maker to help ensure it has a steady supply of semiconductors as it ramps up production of electric vehicles and complex components that require increases in computing power.Under the agreement, the chip maker, GlobalFoundries, agreed to set aside a portion of its manufacturing capacity exclusively to make chips for G.M. The automaker plans to introduce more than two dozen electric vehicles around the world over the next two years.

From Paris to Stockholm and Brussels, European Union leaders and member nations were putting forward moves Monday to ensure the 27-nation bloc would not be left behind by the United States in the green industry race.Talk of huge subsidies to prop up companies at home and fears of a race to the bottom that allows domestic production to muscle out competition are set to dominate the EU's political agenda right up to a special economic summit Feb. 9-10.

Silicon Valley got its name from computer chips, but no longer plays a central role in shaping how they are made.A major supplier to the industry hopes to change that.Applied Materials, the biggest maker of machines for producing semiconductors, said on Monday that it planned to build a massive research facility near its hometown, Santa Clara, Calif., to allow chip makers and universities to collaborate on advances to make more powerful chips.

NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with Robert Daly of the Wilson Center about the Russia-China relationship, and the possibility that China could supply weapons for Russia to use against Ukraine.STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: China's top diplomat went to Russia this week.Wang Yi was in Moscow, and his visit illustrated a reality - China remains one of Russia's very few powerful friends in the world.

Global supply chains are facing unprecedented inventory shortages due to massive disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, trade wars, and extreme weather events.Procurement managers, worried that they may not receive the materials they need, order higher quantities than what their manufacturing or service operations actually need.

Just like DDT, PCBs and asbestos, a group of substances obliquely known as PFAS are incredibly useful, potentially deadly and devilishly difficult to clean up.Since the 1950s, PFAS (per- and polyfluorinated substances) have been used in products ranging from pacemakers and fireproof foam to cosmetics and food containers.

President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Friday, March 24, 2023, in Ottawa, Canada.Andrew Harnik, AP President Joe Biden laid out a vision of world-leading US-Canadian economic cooperation in a speech to Canada's parliament Friday, and announced that the giant neighbors had reached a deal on curbing illegal migration.

US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday announced a deal to curb illegal migration between their two countries."The United States and Canada will work together to discourage unlawful border crossings," Biden said in a speech to the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa.

SOPA Images via Getty Images
TikTok will be outlawed on almost all devices issued by the federal government after lawmakers passed a $1.7 trillion spending bill.Officials crammed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, which the Senate unanimously approved in mid-December, into the mammoth 4,155-page omnibus bill.

A sudden and surprising spike in European exports of washing machines, refrigerators and even electric breast pumps to Russia's neighbors is raising concerns among officials the trade boom may be helping Vladimir Putin's war machine in Ukraine.Armenia imported more washing machines from the European Union during the first eight months of the year than the past two years combined, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the EU's Eurostat database.

If diplomats were on TikTok, de-risk would be trending.The word has suddenly become popular among officials trying to loosen China's grip on global supply chains but not cut ties entirely, with the joint communique from this weekend's Group of 7 meeting making clear that the world's largest democratic economies will now focus on de-risking, not decoupling.

Some of the cruise missiles that Russia launched at Ukraine's civilian infrastructure in late November were manufactured months after the West imposed sanctions intended to deprive Moscow of the components needed to make those munitions, according to a weapons research group.Experts examined remnants of Kh-101 cruise missiles found in Kyiv, the capital, after an attack on Nov. 23 that knocked out electricity and shut down water systems in large areas of the country.

For years, China's annual shopping extravaganza known as Singles Day looked like a profitable exchange between East and West.Thousands of premium Western brands like Apple and L'Oreal were bought by hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers on the e-commerce giant, Alibaba.As Xi Jinping pushes China to become more economically self-sufficient, Singles Day is adjusting to a more insular era, one built on the strength of domestic companies with close scrutiny, and support, from the Chinese Communist Party.

Reactions continue on Vladimir Putin's announcement Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.It's a very significant move, Nikolai Sokol, a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, told Reuters.Russia had always been very proud that it had no nuclear weapons outside its territory.

Russia has struck a deal with neighbouring Belarus to station tactical nuclear weapons on its territory, Tass news agency quoted president Vladimir Putin as saying on Saturday.Such a move would not violate nuclear nonproliferation agreements, Putin said, adding that the United States had stationed nuclear weapons on the territory of European allies.

FILE - Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin enter a hall for talks in the Kremlin in Moscow in 2019.(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool, File)Chinese leader Xi Jinping will travel to Russia next week to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the strongest show of Beijing's support for Moscow since the war in Ukraine began.

On Feb. 26, U.S. officials said that there is not yet evidence that China has sent lethal military support to Russia in its war against Ukraine.(Video: Blair Guild/The Washington Post)
Top administration officials said Sunday there is no evidence that China has sent lethal military support to Russia, a step Beijing is said to be considering.

In Scholz's first trip to Washington since February 2022, the two leaders underlined their resolve to back Kyiv following recent friction over tank deliveries.When they last met Russia was amassing its troops on the border, Biden said in brief remarks to the press, adding the West had vowed to respond and together we made good on that promise.

Beijing wants to subordinate and humiliate the west, according to the Republican chair of a newly created China committee in Congress, who is leading a delegation of hawkish US politicians on a two-day trip to the UK.Mike Gallagher argued that China, under President Xi Jinping, believed in the inevitable demise of capitalism, and said he hoped to better understand how far British politicians of all parties shared his committee's concerns.

Political reporter, BBC News

Rishi Sunak has agreed new defence and economic deals with Japan in a visit to Tokyo, ahead of the G7 summit in Hiroshima.Speaking on board the JS Izumo aircraft carrier, the PM announced a partnership featuring closer UK-Japanese co-operation between armed forces, cyber agencies and semiconductor companies.

The trial of Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigner and media tycoon, which is due to begin this week, marks another low point in China's relentless assault on individual and civil rights in Britain's former colony  whose traditional freedoms Beijing is legally bound to uphold.Lai, a UK citizen who founded the popular Apple Daily newspaper, faces charges of conspiracy to publish seditious material and collusion with foreign powers under Beijing's draconian 2020 national security law.

"Great results can be achieved with small forces," Sun Tzu wrote in "The Art of War" some 2,500 years ago.That quote is so old it's now an adage.But it appears the U.S. isn't content to wager that small actions can achieve the wide-ranging impacts necessary to gain an edge over China in the development of AI and machine learning technologies.

BBC Wales Westminster correspondent

Staff from the UK's largest chip plant have urged ministers to allow the facility to stay in the hands of its Chinese owners.Nexperia was ordered by UK ministers to sell its 86% stake in the Newport site, due to national security concerns.About a dozen members of the Nexperia Newport Staff Association, which says it is "in disbelief" at the decision, travelled to Westminster to put their case to MPs.

As the rest of the world teeters on the brink of recession, the last thing Western policymakers want is for China, the biggest driver of global economic growth since the 2008 financial crisis, to have a lopsided recovery.But that is what is unfolding.After abandoning its thee-year zero-COVID policy in December, the world's second-largest economy isn't exactly firing on all cylinders.

As the rest of the world teeters on the brink of recession, the last thing Western policymakers want is for China, the biggest driver of global economic growth since the 2008 financial crisis, to have a lopsided recovery.But that is what is unfolding.After abandoning its 3-year zero-COVID policy in December, the world's second-largest economy isn't exactly firing on all cylinders.

Japan's trade ministry on Friday said it has begun procedures to restore preferential trade status for South Korea, days after Seoul took a similar step for Tokyo and requested reciprocity, and more than three years after the countries downgraded each other during a bitter historical dispute.Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said talks with South Korea this month showed that its controls over trade in sensitive materials with both civilian and military uses are now as effective as those used by Japan.

South Korea says it will build an enormous facility to make computer chips in the greater Seoul area, with about $230 billion in investment from memory chip giant Samsung Electronics.The plans were announced by President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday and confirmed by the electronics giant.We will build the world's largest new high-tech system semiconductor cluster' in the Seoul Metropolitan area based on large-scale private investment of almost 300 trillion Korean won, he said.

We can expect continued disruption to the global semiconductor industry and, therefore, continued supply chain shortages in the automotive industry throughout 2023, according to a new report in the Financial Times.The head of Onsemi, Hassane El-Khoury, told the paper that "there's nothing you can do now to change 2023," and that "we will be adding capacity every quarter, every month in 2023 to meet our customer demand."

Speaking ahead of his meeting with President Joe Biden on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron warned that US trade policy could "fragment the West."That might sound alarmist, but he was right.Biden's programs to subsidize clean-energy investment and high-tech manufacturing have much to recommend them - but, executed incautiously, they do pose a threat to international economic cooperation.

Narendra Modi, India's prime minister, speaks at DefExpo 2022 in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India, on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022.(Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)Last week, while inaugurating a new aircraft factory in western India, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned to a slogan he coined a few months after taking power in 2014: "Make in India."

A significant number of girls with an interest in tech-based school subjects don't go on to take part in technology programmes at university, according to McKinsey.The consulting firm's research found that 31% of girls studying information science, computer science, and technology at school level don't choose these subjects at university, and the same is true of 18% of girls taking science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects at school level.

With strict limits already in place on China's access to U.S. technology, the federal government is exploring how to further tighten the vise amid growing political and economic tensions.Between the lines: Cracking down on China has support from both parties, though there isn't always agreement on exactly which steps to take.

Patent filings continue to be slightly depressed in the district courts and at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) compared to the highs of last year, with 17 new PTAB cases and 38 new district court filings.New filings consist primarily of a few apparently funded cases-a Fortress entity, for instance, sued Amazon, and a Taiwanese entity with no Internet presence has sued Apple and Samsung on wireless charging patents, with some new Jeff Gross entity filings, a slew of Dynapass filings, and some other banking campaigns picking up steam; at the Board, most of the fillings revolved around existing campaigns Robocast and Daedalus Prime, as detailed below.

AUSTIN, Texas Editor's note: An earlier version of this story stated that Austin ranked No. 5 for tech layoffs across the country.The story has been updated to reflect that Austin ranks No. 5 for layoffs, regardless of industry.A new study of mass layoffs showed that Texas took a hit this year.CivMetrics, an economic data collector, shows that Texas ranks second for most layoffs in the country, and Austin ranks fifth highest for layoffs across major cities, totaling 1,255 workers losing their jobs in 2023.

AUSTIN, Texas  The Austin ISD school board rejected a tax break for a major semiconductor company Thursday night.After discussing the item, the board struck down the proposal with a narrow vote of 5-4.It was on the agenda for the board's Dec. 15 meeting and was one of the last Chapter 313 applications AISD had to vote on.

In Scholz's first trip to Washington since February 2022, the two leaders underlined their resolve to back Kyiv following recent friction over tank deliveries.When they last met Russia was amassing its troops on the border, Biden said in brief remarks to the press, adding the West had vowed to respond and together we made good on that promise.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called on Monday for a new European policy to protect the EU's industrial base in the face of massive US subsidies.Published: 16 January 2023 17:36 CET French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire (C) addresses the press at the EU headquarters in Brussels on January 16, 2023.

Ford Motor reported Thursday that its new-vehicle sales fell 2 percent in 2022 as shortages of computer chips and other supply disruptions slowed its production of trucks and sport utility vehicles.The automaker said it sold 1.85 million cars and light trucks in the United States last year, as well as 13,539 heavy trucks.

Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin warned an Australian audience Friday that a Russian victory over Ukraine would empower other aggressors and urged democracies against forming critical dependencies on authoritarian states such as China.Marin was speaking in Sydney at the end of the first-ever visit by a Finnish prime minister to Australia and New Zealand.

Since the isolation of graphene, we've identified a number of materials that form atomically thin sheets.Like graphene, some of these sheets are made of a single element; others form from chemicals where the atomic bonds naturally create a sheet-like structure.Many of these materials have distinct properties.

A newly created semiconductor industry body is attending the COP27 climate conference this week to talk about members' aims to hit net zero emissions by 2050 - and hopefully clean up the chip industry's act.The Semiconductor Climate Consortium ( SCC) was formed at the start of November and comprises more than 60 founding members, including some of the biggest chip manufacturers such as Intel, Micron, GlobalFoundries, TSMC, Samsung and SK hynix.