x1 gaming Goodbye to Small Yard, High Fence

On Dec. 2x1 gaming, the United States announced a new round of export controls on advanced semiconductors to China, and more restrictions are expected soon. It was among the final pieces in an enduring legacy of the Biden administration: a significant expansion in the scale and scope of restricting China’s access to technology.

To explain this policy over the past two years, including this month’s announcement, the administration repeatedly turned to one metaphor: a small yard with a high fence. It means that sensitive technologies should be kept within a yard protected by a high fence of trade and investment controls. But the yard should be small, limited to a narrow set of advanced technologies with military applications, while broader commercial trade and investment with China would continue.

As the Biden administration enters its final days, the contradictions of this “small yard, high fence” strategy are piling up. It is an attempt to achieve two goals that are inherently in conflict — pursuing a fundamental shift in the geopolitics of technology competition without upending the global economic order. The administration is falling short on both of these objectives. When Donald Trump takes office, his foreign policy team is likely to take the technology control tools that the Biden team developed but was reluctant to employ broadly and to unleash them at full force, resulting in significant economic disruption. So much for that manicured small yard.

The idea behind the “small yard, high fence” strategy made sense at first and reflected the Biden administration’s attempt to balance competing pressures in its relationship with China: the need to maintain, as the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, put it, “as large of a lead as possible” over its primary strategic rival in foundational technology without severing all meaningful economic links.

Such a scenario would represent a notable degree of ticket-splitting, perpetuating a trend captured by surveys throughout this election cycle. Democratic Senate candidates in a number of swing states, including Arizona and Nevada, have consistently polled ahead of the top of the ticket, especially when President Biden was the party’s standard-bearer. As Ms. Harris’s nomination has made the election more competitive, the gap between her and those down-ballot Democrats has narrowed — but the trend persists in most races in swing states.

Ms. Harris may give remarks about border issues during the visit, according to the people, who insisted on anonymity to discuss a trip that has not yet been made public. The people said final details about exactly where Ms. Harris would visit or what else she might do on the trip have not been decided. The Harris campaign did not immediately provide a comment.

This has proved to be exceedingly difficult. When the administration unveiled the first round of sweeping semiconductor export controls on China in October 2022, Alex W. Palmer in The Times described it as amounting to “a declaration of economic war.” And it came with sharp economic and diplomatic costs. U.S. tech companies worried that the high fence might shut them out from the Chinese market. U.S. allies in Europe and Asia shared some of Washington’s concerns about China’s military modernization program but were wary of making a sudden break with Beijing.

To ease those concerns, the Biden administration tried to be cautious and deliberate in introducing restrictions. Just a week after the semiconductor export controls were announced, Mr. Sullivan deployed the “small yard, high fence” metaphor to explain the administration’s approach. After that, “small yard, high fence” appeared time and again in talking points and news releases as the administration rolled out controls and restrictions on advanced technologies.

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