Intermediary Buyers Mask Chip Exports

Intermediary firms in Southeast Asia can legally purchase high‑end US semiconductors and then divert them to prohibited end users in China, using opaque corporate ties, falsified declarations, and transit hubs to evade export controls. Public trade records, government travel bans and ongoing investigations show this is not hypothetical but a recurring mechanism that channels compute to restricted actors. — If intermediaries reliably defeat export controls, US industrial and national‑security policy must shift from single‑bilateral controls to enforcement of downstream end‑use verification, corporate transparency, and regional cooperation.