Chip espionage is the unauthorized acquisition of semiconductor designs, manufacturing know-how or trade secrets for the benefit of a foreign government or org…
Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley demonstrated the point-contact transistor in December 1947, the starting point of the modern semiconductor era. Every device in this timel…
Jack Kilby (Texas Instruments) built the first working IC in September 1958; Robert Noyce (Fairchild) independently developed the manufacturable planar-process IC, filin…
Morris Chang founded TSMC in 1987, separating chip design from manufacturing at scale for the first time. Decades later, Taiwan's foundry capacity is a global chokepoint.
U.S. prosecutors alleged UMC and China's Fujian Jinhua used a recruited engineer to obtain Micron's DRAM trade secrets. UMC pleaded guilty in October 2022, paying a $60…
ASML, the sole global EUV lithography supplier, disclosed that a former China-based employee misappropriated internal data related to its patterning technology. No publi…
South Korean prosecutors indicted five former Samsung employees over DRAM technology allegedly sent to China's CXMT; separately, 10 people including a Samsung executive…
The National Assembly passed the Criminal Act amendment February 26, 2026; the National Intelligence Service said it would help prevent leaks of strategic technologies i…
Article 98 now covers espionage for the benefit of any foreign country or equivalent organization, not only an enemy state -- minimum three years in prison. The older en…
Read the complete story, FAQs and key facts.