A Chinese national on Oct. 17 pleaded guilty to illegally exporting U.S. semiconductor equipment to a U.S.-sanctioned company in China, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California.
Chen Lin, 65, admitted to knowingly attempting to buy a wafer-cutting machine with the intent to sell to a Chinese company on the Entity List, an export blacklist maintained by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), according to a press release issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday.
Wafer-cutting machines are precision tools used in the semiconducting manufacturing process to cut semiconductor wafers into smaller pieces….