“Our goal is to actually try to track that back, all the way back to the U.S. supplier” to find out “how did it find its way into that weapons system,” one Commerce Department official mentioned of the probes.
“Just because a chip, a company’s chip, is found in a weapon system doesn’t mean we’ve opened up an investigation on that company,” the official added. “What we’ve done, though, is we’ve opened up an investigation on how that company’s chip got into that system.”
It isn’t clear which particular parts are being probed. But investigators from a wide range of nations have recognized Western electronics in Russian weaponry discovered in Ukraine. Many of these parts seem to have been manufactured years in the past, earlier than the United States tightened export restrictions after Russia seized Crimea in 2014. But others have been manufactured as lately as 2020, based on Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a analysis group in London that has examined a few of the elements.
For years it was authorized for firms to promote primary pc chips to Russian military entities with out first receiving permission from the U.S. authorities, so pinpointing unlawful gross sales requires figuring out the kind of chip and date of sale. Tracing transactions will also be laborious as a result of digital parts typically journey by way of a sequence of distributors earlier than reaching the tip consumer.
A lawyer representing one of many contacted expertise firms mentioned investigators for now are casting a “wide net,” taking a look at a wide range of totally different chips and digital parts to trace the paths they took to the Russian military.
Among the questions federal agents are asking: whether or not tech firms offered their merchandise to a particular checklist of firms, together with middlemen, which will have been concerned in the provision chain, the lawyer mentioned.
Russia manufactures few pc chips or electronics of its personal, forcing it to depend on imports.
The United States for many years has tightly managed gross sales to Russia of the highest-tech chips and people designed for military use, requiring exporters to acquire a authorities license. But gross sales of electronics beneath that threshold — together with the type generally discovered in business merchandise — weren’t broadly restricted till 2014, when the United States started requiring exporters to acquire licenses earlier than promoting a broader vary of chips to the Russian military.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the U.S. and lots of allies have prohibited all chip gross sales to Russian military patrons, and positioned restriction on chip gross sales to different Russian patrons in an effort to forestall the nation’s armed forces from accessing western high-tech.
The federal probes come as researchers and safety providers from Ukraine, Britain and elsewhere report discovering a bunch of Western electronics in Russian military gear broken or deserted in Ukraine.
CAR final month despatched investigators to Ukraine to look at Russian weaponry and communications gear, and reported finding components from 70 firms based mostly in the United States and Europe.
They discovered the elements in military radios, airborne protection techniques and in remnants of cruise missiles that the Ukrainians recovered in numerous cities and villages, Damien Spleeters, one of many CAR investigators, mentioned in an interview.
CAR for now’s declining to call the Western firms concerned, as a result of it’s nonetheless contacting them to request extra information, Spleeters mentioned.
Markings on two foreign-made chips that Spleeters examined confirmed that they have been manufactured in 2019, he mentioned.
“It’s significant for me because it shows that even after Russia took Crimea and the first package of sanctions were taken against them, they still managed to acquire critical technology, critical components for important pieces of equipment that they are now using against Ukraine,” Spleeters mentioned.
Those chips, discovered inside two Russian military radios recovered in Ukraine’s Luhansk area, had a few of their identification markings scratched out, suggesting that Russia “wanted to make it more difficult to find out who was involved in the chain of supply,” Spleeters mentioned.
Another set of chips manufactured by Western firms between 2017 and 2020 have been a part of missile fragments that hit the southern Ukrainian metropolis of Mykolaiv on March 29, Spleeters mentioned. At the time, Russian forces have been making an attempt to seize a broad swathe of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.
CAR additionally examined Western-made chips manufactured between 2013 and 2018 that have been a part of a missile that landed in central Ukraine on Feb. 24, the primary day of Russia’s invasion, Spleeters mentioned.
The newest CAR findings comply with a report from the group late final yr that detailed Western electronics discovered in a number of Russian military drones.
A workforce from a separate British group — the Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, a defense-focused assume tank — additionally traveled to Ukraine lately to examine Russian gear and to evaluate teardowns carried out by Ukraine’s military.
A single piece of radio-jamming gear revealed pc chips from a dozen U.S. firms, together with Intel, Analog Devices, Texas Instruments and Onsemi, based on a report RUSI revealed in April. The gear additionally contained parts from half a dozen chipmakers in Europe, Japan and Taiwan.
The report revealed the half numbers for the parts, which The Washington Post used to establish the chip firms.
The radio-interference gear, named Borisoglebsk-2, was designed to interrupt the enemy’s communications and was in all probability manufactured round 2015 or later, Nick Reynolds, one of many report’s authors, mentioned in an interview.
None of the Western chips was particularly designed to be used in military gear, based on two electrical engineers who reviewed the part checklist. The elements have been developed for basic business use, and lots of have been comparatively outdated, manufactured between 2000 and 2010, the engineers mentioned.
“A lot of these components are very general purpose and could be used in wide range of devices,” mentioned Peter Bermel, an affiliate professor {of electrical} and pc 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 the manufacturers,” Bermel added.
Reynolds, a analysis analyst for land warfare at RUSI, mentioned Russia’s technical demise in latest a long time, partly sparked by a big post-Soviet mind drain, has pressured it to make use of Western chips. “Its defense industry has struggled to attract and retain talented young engineers, who have often chosen to move abroad instead,” Reynolds mentioned by e mail.
Intel spokesman William Moss mentioned that for over a decade, the entire firm’s “sales in Russia have been through distributors who are responsible for complying with applicable laws, including U.S. 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 sanctions,” he added.
Onsemi, a chip firm based mostly in Phoenix, mentioned it stopped producing one of many chips discovered in the Russian gear in 2008. The chip was “designed for a variety of uses in commercial products,” spokeswoman Stefanie Cuene mentioned, including that the corporate complies with U.S. export controls and presently doesn’t promote any merchandise to Russia or Belarus.
Texas Instruments “complies with applicable laws and regulations” and “is not selling any products into Russia or Belarus,” spokeswoman Ellen Fishpaw mentioned.
Analog Devices, the corporate behind greater than a dozen of the parts discovered in the Russian gear, didn’t reply to requests for remark.
The RUSI researchers additionally reported inspecting a U.S.-manufactured part that the Ukrainian military discovered inside a Russian 9M949 guided rocket. The rocket makes use of the part — a sort of digital machine known as a fiber-optic gyroscope — for navigation, RUSI mentioned.
The British researchers declined to call the U.S. firm that made that part, saying RUSI was persevering with to analysis that and different elements.