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The list sanctions companies assessed as posing a potential threat to US national security or operating adversely to US foreign policy interests
On January 6, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced the latest wave of companies to be added the so-called ‘Entity List’.
US companies seeking to export to companies on the Entity List must first receive a specific. licence to do-so from the US government, most of which are reviewed with the ‘presumption of denial’.
This latest update saw BIS revise the Export Administration Regulations to include 13 new entities: 11 from China, 1 from Myanmar, and 1 from Pakistan. The list of companies added can be found here, while the full ‘Entity List’ can be accessed here.
The companies added are, for the most part, unsurprising. Chinese companies have made up the lion’s share of entrants to the Entity List for many years now – a symptom of the deeper of the technological tensions between the country and successive US governments. Here, the majority of the Chinese entrants are tech firms accused of supporting the Chinese military, alongside a handful of research institutes designated as working on ‘hypersonic weapons’.
The sole Pakistani entrant, Emerging Future Solutions Private Limited, was similarly added based on military connections adverse to US interests, including supporting Pakistan’s ballistic missile research efforts.
But perhaps the most interesting of the new additions is Myanmar’s Mytel, which has been accused of helping the ruling military junta prepetrate human rights abuses by assisting with surveillance and financial support.
Mytel was founded as a joint venture between the Burmese military and Vietnamese telco Viettel (itself owned by Vietnam’s Ministry of National Defence) in 2016.
The company’s military links have been a source of controversy since the company’s inception, with Mytel having been accused of corruption, cronyism, and carrying out government disinformation campaigns.
The company initially faced a broad wave of economic sanctions from various Western countries following the military coup in 2021, but the US was notably absent. Since then, the company has been accused of further misdeeds, including using Mytel SIMs to track soldiers’ movements and conversations, aiming to root out defectors.
However, exactly how effective these new sanctions from the US will be remains to be seen. The efficacy of the Entity List has been repeatedly called into question, with detractors arguing that many licences were still being issued. In 2023, for example, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul notably complained that BIS had approved more than $23 billion in tech licences to blacklisted companies in just a three month period in Jan–March 2022.
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