America has targeted Russia’s technological fabric

President Joe Biden announced a suite of sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. The focus was on the country’s biggest banks, cutting them off from the dollar and limiting their ability to raise money abroad. But the announcement also contained a new kind of sanction, one that attempts to choke Russia’s supply of technological components. Mr Biden reckoned these measures would cut off “more than half of Russia’s high-tech imports”.The American government has done something like this before to Huawei, a Chinese telecoms manufacturer, which it suspected of spying. Donald Trump’s administration spent years honing its export rules in an attempt to stop the firm gaining access to cutting-edge technology. When it finally got the rules right in 2020, Huawei was instantly blocked from buying vital microprocessors from any company in the world that used American technology to produce them. The firm’s revenues plunged by 30% the next year.