Toshiba’s Big Technology Export Scandal

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I recently read an interview with ASML's (now retiring) CEO - Peter Wennink - about the issue of banning Dutch exports of lithography machines to China.

In it, he talked about the notion about ASML restricting exports of older, DUV lithography machines.

> Maybe they think we should come over the bridge, but ASML has already surrendered. We are no longer allowed to supply EUV to China. And EUV is half of our turnover ...

He also pointed out that the lithography ban directly benefitted American semiconductor equipment makers of items not covered by the bans:

> If China still wants to do something with advanced chips, they have to buy very advanced deposition and etching machines to 'shrink' even more. And they mainly come from the US.

His feelings illustrate the delicate, difficult challenge of keeping valuable, militarily powerful dual-use technologies out of the hands of the enemy.

The China semiconductor issue is not new. The United States and the West have long encountered these same fractures and sentiments during its long engagement with the Soviet Union.

In 1987, a massive scandal broke in Japan that illustrated how weaknesses in the system caused a major lapse.

In this video, we are going to look at one of the most serious geopolitical technology scandals of the 1980s: the Toshiba-Kongsberg Incident.

Beginnings

World War II greatly stimulated Soviet industrial capacity. One can argue that - even despite the titanic war damage - the Soviet economy was stronger after the war than before it.

The reason for this expansion in industrial and economic capacity was technology acquisition. Before the War, trade with Europe was tiny - just 1% of GNP.

The years during and immediately after the war, however, the Soviet Union acquired and received a wave of Western technologies via the American Lend-Lease Act, reparations and the wholesale confiscation of German assets.

Lend-lease provisions alone infused the Soviet Union with over a billion dollars worth of modern American equipment. This equipment played a significant role in building up the Soviets' indigenous technological base and military after the war.

Post-War

Export controls in the United States date back to 1917 during World War I, but it was during the Second World War that they became what they are today.

During the 1930s, they were used to enforce American neutrality. Moral outrage over Japanese bombing of civilians ...