The US gets tough on data sales.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lily Dramale. It's Friday and that means it's time to dig in to some of this week's tech headlines in today's Marketplace TechBites Week in Review.

There are signs that the semiconductor supply shortage is finally easing up as more companies

nab chips to power their AI ambitions.

Plus, Apple reportedly hits the brakes on their plans to create their own electric vehicle.

But first, there is significant movement on data privacy policy.

This week, the Biden administration signed an executive order,

restricting the sale of American user data to countries of concern.

Natasha Muscarenezas reporter at the information join me to discuss.

We're seeing a number of policies from the Biden administration both formal but also around you know certain companies such

as Tik-Tah. And so when I saw the DOJ draw up this you know plan to enforce a number

of restrictions my first question was okay what are the

countries of concern and those are very much a lot of ones that we've you know already

seen policies around China Russia North, and others, according to reporting.

And so, yeah, I definitely am seeing this as like a continuation of a lot of the policies

and worries that we've seen from the administration so far around data leakage.

Yeah, and computer hacking was already prohibited in the U.S.

But buying sensitive data through brokers is still legal and so that's where

this crackdown comes into play. Do we have a sense of why the administration is

doing this now? I imagine that part of it is that the administration is only seeing this worry grow. Like you said, like the fact that data brokers and companies can still sell American data to organizations that are in, you know,

countries that can be adversarial to the United States, especially China and

...