‘I told you so’: China’s chip sector is making breakthroughs—and U.S. export controls are the reasons why

“I’m not going to say ‘I told you so,'” says Rakesh Kumar. “But it really is ‘I told you so.'” Kumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and author of Chip Age: How Semiconductors Became the World’s Most Powerful Resource, has spent four years as one of Washington’s most persistent academic critics of its attempt to freeze China’s chip industry. Days before the Biden administration unveiled its sweeping export controls on advanced chips and chipmaking equipment in October 2022—restrictions that have been expanded repeatedly since—he warned in Fortune that the crackdown would not work. “You can’t win an important race by hoping to trip your opponent, especially when there are significant costs to doing so,” he wrote. “A far better strategy is to run faster.” Four…