Looks like their influence has been growing fast lately especially in the Republican circles and the hawkish Democrats circles, all this China bashing just feed their narrative.
The Biden administration is more "business friendly" but they don't want to appear "China friendly" so they will be careful no to adopt any China policy that could be used against them, they don't want the republicans to adopt the same tactics they used against Trump with Putin. For some reason the out of touch Democrats think the being tough on China and ignoring the economic issues that plague the average American will help them to win elections. I think they are sadly mistaken.
The move would be quite obvious if you think about it from the perspective of natsec type. What have we been hearing from US military in the past year?
- China has caught up/surpassed us in several areas
- China is better than us in EM Warfare
- China is the pacing threat, we need to meet the challenge of China
- China is so great with their radar, they are sending different signals to us every time and lighting us up on their radar
- We might not achieve air superiority around China
So if you are a national security guy sitting somewhere in DC, you are probably scared to death of the possibility that America might not control the full sky. The Air Force is telling you China has these great aircraft radar that are picking up and locking onto F-35s. What do you do? Well of course, restrict the sale of all chips to China. That will stop them.
Of course, none of this is different than what happened over 15 years ago when US senate freaked out because EU was debating on lifting arms embargo against China and inviting China to Galileo program. Of course, their heavy pressure caused EU to back off the former and get resistant about the latter. What happened after? Well, China is now ahead of EU in most arm production areas and announced the Beidou expansion soon after (and now has more satellites in orbit than Galileo).
It's quite laughable that the US politicians keep making the same mistakes over and over again. However, if you live in America, you will know why. We have some of the most stupid and corrupt politicians around that just follow the orders of their lobbyists. Except in this case, I don't think it will take China much time to fully replace what America won't sell them. At this pace, US government is going to cause American businesses to lose all of their industrial advantages and just export energy and farm products.
