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Federal agents have begun questioning US technology companies about how their computer chips ended up in Russian military equipment recovered in Ukraine.
Commerce Department Agents Who Enforce Export Controls According to people familiar with the matter, they are interrogating closely with the FBI, part of a joint tour of the companies to ask about Western chips and components found in Russian radar systems, drones, tanks, ground-control equipment and coastal ships. are paying. The condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive investigation.
A commerce official said of the investigation, “our goal is really to try to trace back to the US supplier” to determine how it “find its way into that weapons system”.
“Just because a chip, a chip of a company, is found in a weapon system, it doesn’t mean that we have started an investigation into that company,” the official said. “However, what we’ve done is we started investigating how that company’s chip got into that system.”
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It is not clear which specific components are being investigated. But investigators from various countries have identified Western eletronics among Russian weapons found in Ukraine. Many of those components appear to have been manufactured years ago, before the US tightened export restrictions after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. But others were built as recently as 2020, according to Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a research group in London. Checked out some parts.
For years it was legal for companies to sell basic computer chips to Russian military entities without obtaining permission from the US government, hence the need to determine the type of chip and the date of sale to indicate the illegal sale. Tracing transactions can also be laborious because electronic components often travel through a series of distributors before reaching the end user.
A lawyer representing one of the technology companies contacted said that for now investigators are casting a “wide net” looking at a variety of chips and electronic components to track the path of the Russian military. Can you
Among the questions federal agents are asking are: Do tech companies sell their products to a specific list of companies?, including middlemen, who may be involved in the supply chain, the lawyer said.
Russia manufactures some of its own computer chips or electronics, forcing it to rely on imports.
For decades the United States has strictly controlled the sale of high-tech chips and designs designed for military use to Russia, which requires exporters to obtain government licenses. But sales of electronics below that limit – including the types commonly found in commercial products – were not widely restricted until 2014, when the United States licensed exporters before selling a wide range of chips to the Russian military. Need to get started.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the US and several allies have banned all chip sales to Russian military buyers, and chip to other Russian buyers in an effort to prevent the country’s armed forces from accessing Western high-tech. Sale is banned.
The federal investigation comes as reports of researchers and security services in Ukraine, the UK and elsewhere find a host of Western electronics in Ukraine in damaged or abandoned Russian military gear.
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CAR last month sent investigators to Ukraine to investigate Russian weapons and communications equipment, and reported finding components from 70 companies based in the United States and Europe.
One of the CAR investigators, Damien Spielters, said in an interview he found parts in the remains of military radios, air defense systems and cruise missiles that were recovered in various cities and villages in Ukraine.
Splitters said CAR declined to name the Western companies involved, as it is still contacting them for more information.
The splitters on the two foreign-made chips checked that they were manufactured in 2019, he said.
“It’s important to me because it shows that even after Russia took Crimea and took the first package of sanctions against them, they still managed to get important technology, critical components for what they are now. are using against Ukraine,” the Splitters said.
Those chips found inside two Russian military radios recovered in Ukraine’s Luhansk region had scratched some of their identification markings, the Splitters said, suggesting that Russia “wanted to make it more difficult to trace that supplies.” Who was involved in the series?
Splitters said another set of chips manufactured by Western companies between 2017 and 2020 were part of missile fragments that hit the city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine on March 29. At the time, Russian forces were attempting to capture a broad area of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.
The CAR also examined Western-made chips manufactured between 2013 and 2018 that were part of a missile that landed in central Ukraine on February 24, the day before Russia’s invasion, Splitters said.
The latest CAR findings follow a report from the group late last year that found detailed Western electronics in several Russian military drones.
A team from a different British group the Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, a defense-focused think tank also recently traveled to Ukraine to inspect Russian equipment and review Tears made by the Ukrainian army.
According to a RUSI report published in April, a piece of radio-jamming equipment detected computer chips from a dozen US companies, including Intel, Analog Devices, Texas Instruments and Onesemi. The gear also had components from half a dozen chipmakers in Europe, Japan and Taiwan.
One of the report’s authors, Nick Reynolds, said in an interview, the radio-interference device, called Borisoglebsk-2, was designed to intercept enemy communications and was likely manufactured in 2015 or later.
According to two electrical engineers who reviewed the component list, none of the Western chips were specifically designed for use in military equipment. The parts were developed for general commercial use, and many were relatively old, manufactured between 2000 and 2010, the engineers said.
“Many of these components are very general purpose and can be used in a wide range of devices,” said Peter Barmel, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University. “Most of the items they are listing are available through any commercial computer parts supplier or digital parts supplier.”
“A non-trivial fraction of these parts are now considered obsolete by manufacturers,” Barmel said.
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Reynolds, a research analyst on land warfare at RUSI, said Russia’s technological demise in recent decades, partly resulting from a massive post-Soviet brain drain, has forced it to use Western chips. “Its defense industry has struggled to attract and retain talented young engineers, who have often chosen to move abroad,” Reynolds said by email.
Intel spokesman William Moss said that for more than a decade, the company’s “sales in Russia have been through distributors who are responsible for complying with applicable laws, including US export controls.”
“Intel has suspended all shipments to customers in both Russia and Belarus, and Intel will continue to comply with all applicable export regulations and restrictions,” he said.
OneSemi, a Phoenix-based chip company, said it had stopped production of one of the chips found in Russian devices in 2008. The chip was “designed for a variety of uses in commercial products,” said spokeswoman Stephanie Cune, adding that the company complies with US export controls and currently does not sell any products to Russia or Belarus.
Texas Instruments “complies with applicable laws and regulations” and “is not selling any products in Russia or Belarus,” said spokeswoman Ellen Fishpaw.
Analog Devices, the company behind more than a dozen components found in Russian devices, did not respond to requests for comment.
RUSI researchers also reported inspecting a US-made component that the Ukrainian military found inside a Russian 9M949 guided rocket. The rocket uses the component — a type of electronic device called a fiber-optic gyroscope — for navigation, RUSI said.
British researchers declined to name the US company that made that component, saying RUSI was continuing to research that and other parts.
