This is John Batchel, a conversation with my good colleague Chris Regal about the

Congress's concern that the chipmakers and the supply chain for the chipmakers and

around the world are selling to the Chinese, giving them an advantage that is said to be

dangerous. However, Chris qualifies what is being sold, not the high end. Not yet,

anyway. That's smuggling stories, not selling stories. However, there is a twist here, a concern of the

company selling into China, and Chris explains succinctly and diplomatically.

More of this tonight.

Chris Regal.

So John, I think the nuance is that the publicly traded companies, which are heavily regulated,

heavily watched, are selling slightly older generation tools to the Chinese.

So it's the prime generation of tools, the most advanced tools that are restricted.

The older tools or older style tools can still be sold to the Chinese.

So in any of these companies' environments, they're all very large, well capitalized public companies in every case.

So they're going to follow the letter of the law.

But you go back to what that law restricts or those instructions restrict to say you won't sell newest and latest generation, but you can still sell your slightly older generations.

It keeps the Chinese in the game,

but it does not violate the law. However, ultimately, in those decision points, the Chinese will

always push to try to build their own local industry. So you've also seen many of the top equipment

manufacturers start to lessen their sales into China just for fear of their own intellectual property being appropriated by the Chinese.