A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
A Senate investigative panel has uncovered what lawmakers say is new evidence of American technology enabling Russia’s war in Ukraine, raising the prospect that combatants on both sides of the bloody struggle are using U.S.-powered tools.
The findings paint an unsettling picture of American industry’s alleged complicity in the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the war enters its third year, despite the Biden administration’s levies of hundreds of financial and other sanctions on the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee investigators are scrutinizing U.S. manufacturers’ compliance with sanctions on Russia. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat, presented their early findings at a committee hearing last week.
“American manufacturers are fueling and supporting the growing and gargantuan Russian war machine,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “They are used in missiles, drones, munitions and other weapons of war. The Russians are relying on American technology.”
Mr. Blumenthal, who leads the panel’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, said America’s export control regime is proving ineffective, with lethal consequences for Ukrainian forces trying to hold back Russia’s bigger and better-armed forces.
SEE ALSO: Russia’s defense industry will keep growing this year, say U.K. analysts
The senator returned from Ukraine earlier this year with a folder from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy documenting 211 American-manufactured semiconductors, chips and other tools evident in missiles and high-tech products killing Ukrainians.
Waving the folder at a hearing, Mr. Blumenthal said four top American technology companies — AMD, Analog Devices, Intel and Texas Instruments — made 87 of those components.
Analog Devices, Intel and Texas Instruments told The Washington Times that they stopped shipping products to Russia after its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. AMD did not respond to a request for comment.
Senate investigators identified spikes in those four companies’ exports to countries that are not facing restrictions and may function as middlemen passing along American technology to Russia, including Armenia, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Turkey.
“The stark increases for these four companies include exports to Kazakhstan going up almost 1,000 times from 2021 to 2022,” committee investigators said in a staff memo. “For the same period, exports to Georgia increased over 34 times, exports to Armenia were over 28 times greater, exports to Turkey more than doubled, and exports to Finland were roughly 1.5 times greater.”
New questions
The Senate investigators said the preliminary data provoked questions about the compliance and export control programs at the companies named. Texas Instruments told The Times it is cooperating with the Senate investigators and has a dedicated team that carefully monitors the sale and shipment of its products.
“TI strongly opposes the use of our chips in Russian military equipment and the illicit diversion of our products to Russia,” the company said in a statement.
Analog Devices, also known as ADI, said it supports federal investigators’ efforts and has partnered with multiple law enforcement agencies to “take appropriate actions” against improper diversion of its products.
“ADI has complied fully with export laws that apply to the sales identified,” Analog Devices said in a statement. “ADI has robust internal policies, controls and practices to ensure sales of ADI products comply with export control laws in the U.S. and other countries in which ADI operates.”
Intel said it was also working on compliance and touted its suspension of shipments to Russia and Belarus after the outbreak of the war.
“Intel continues to comply with all applicable export regulations and sanctions in the countries in which it operates, and Intel’s contracts require its customers and distributors to comply with the same regulations,” Intel said in a statement. “Intel actively and diligently works to track and mitigate potential distributor issues and has zero tolerance for circumvention of its requirements.”
The companies’ answers will likely not satisfy the Ukrainian government nor decision-makers in Washington who have strongly backed Kyiv in the fight.
The findings could affect several issues before lawmakers, including a stalled military aid package for Ukraine and questions about the Commerce Department’s ability to identify and prevent the export of banned products to hostile governments.
Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, said the policy of sanctions on Russia, embraced by the U.S. and allies in Europe and Asia, has not worked. The top-ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee said lawmakers need to dramatically rethink their policy surrounding Russia’s war.
“As supportive as I am of the Ukrainian people, as much as I think Vladimir Putin is an evil war criminal, the reality we have to face is that Vladimir Putin will not lose this war,” Mr. Johnson said at the Feb. 27 committee hearing.
“You plug one hole, another hole is going to be opening up,” Mr. Johnson said of the sanctions.
Russia’s military is not the only adversary benefiting from U.S. technology despite governmental efforts to limit the flow of sensitive products.
The bipartisan leadership of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence wrote to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo last month expressing alarm that her team had not sufficiently used export controls and other mechanisms to stop the flow of critical technology and talent to China.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.