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Washington, D.C.- Yesterday, House Foreign Affairs Committee Lead Republican Michael McCaul pressed Secretary of State Antony Blinken for answers on the administration’s plan to counter recent threats from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and protect critical U.S. technology from CCP-backed companies.

WATCH HERE. 

-Questions as Delivered-

On Protecting Taiwan and the U.S. Semiconductor Supply Chain

“You know, I’ve been critical that more weapons didn’t go in [to Ukraine] before the invasion. It seemed to be waiting until after the invasion. I will say, I was at the Polish-Ukraine border last week, and I was actually very pleased to see a lot of 18-wheelers going in, and we know what they were carrying. But Zelenskyy said, if we had access to all of the weapons we need, which our partners have and which are comparable to the weapon used by the Russian Federation, we would have already ended this war. I don’t think we can afford to make the same mistakes though in Taiwan. The stakes are high. They make 90 percent of advanced semiconductor chips. If the CCP controlled, if they take Taiwan, they could weaponize the semiconductor supply chain and decimate the United States economy. A CCP controlled Taiwan would give China a physical base and the first island chain that would cut the U.S. off from our allies and put us at a strategic disadvantage to future aggression. My question, very quickly, the chairman and I do sign off on foreign military weapon sales. We sent a letter, a joint letter, to you on December the 3rd of last year. There are about ten weapon systems, I won’t go into detail on all of them, but all very important. When I met the ambassador from Taiwan, she said I have not received any of these. I think deterrence is important, and we wrote to request notification of the pending shipment of these sales to Taiwan. Why is this being held up? Many of these were signed off by the chairman and myself two years ago.”

On Protecting Critical U.S. Technology from the CCP

“My last question, Financial Times broke a story yesterday that the CCP’s national champion for memory chips, a company called YMTC is breaking the U.S. foreign direct product rule and providing critical technology to Huawei. Do you agree that any company that violates U.S. law to provide critical technology to a sanctioned CCP controlled country poses a threat to our national security? And if so, would you commit today to getting YMTC, which is a real threat, sir, as you know, putting that on the entities list?”