Strategic Technology Denial: Assessing the Effectiveness of Unilateral Export Controls on Advanced Technologies

Abstract

This thesis evaluates the effectiveness of U.S.-led unilateral export controls on advanced technologies, focusing on semiconductors and strategic competition between the United States and China. Export controls seek to safeguard national security by slowing rivals’ access to frontier capabilities, yet their long‑term strategic value is debated. This thesis develops a structured analytical framework using four effectiveness indicators: delay at the technological frontier, constraint of substitution pathways, innovation response, and enforcement coherence and durability. Using qualitative industry data, case studies, and comparative analyses of U.S. and Chinese policy responses from 2019 to 2025, the study finds that export controls reliably generate immediate and measurable disruption, particularly when they target highly concentrated chokepoints such as advanced lithography, AI accelerators, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. These measures impose delay, raise development costs, and complicate scaling at the frontier. At the same time, the evidence shows that sustained denial pressure systemically reallocates and intensifies innovation effort, accelerating domestic investment, architectural redesign, and the formation of parallel innovation pathways. Over time, enforcement divergence among allies and third country transshipment further erodes the durability of unilateral controls. The analysis also finds that China’s adaptive capacity reflects not only post 2019 policy responses, but a substantial stock of human capital and systems level knowledge accumulated before comprehensive controls. These forms of embedded learning limit the extent to which export controls can reverse capability development once it has begun. Accordingly, while U.S.-led semiconductor export controls reliably generate short‑term disruption and frontier delay, they tend to narrow rather than widen long‑term capability gaps unless paired with sustained multilateral coordination and domestic innovation reinforcement. The thesis concludes that unilateral export controls shape the tempo of technological competition more reliably than their terminal distribution, functioning as time-buying instruments rather than permanent barriers. Their strategic value depends on whether the delay they impose is converted into renewed innovation capacity, resilient supply chains, and durable enforcement coalitions. Absent these complements, export controls risk accelerating the technological self sufficiency they are intended to prevent. Keywords: Export controls; Semiconductors; Strategic technology denial; Innovation policy; U.S. – China competition; Dual-use technologies; Supply chain fragmentation; Enforcement mechanisms; Multilateral cooperation; Technological self-reliance.