Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a show that looks at the way technology, politics, and policy impacts the world around us. The tools we use, the way services are delivered, and how we talk about and set policy all shape our society. We'll gather around and have a chat about these things together and more. Before we get started, I do wanna let you all know that we've started a Discord for the podcast. There will be a link with an invite down in the episode description. Do feel free to go check that out. It's a small community right now, but hoping to grow it. It's a great way to reach out to me and let me know things that you might want us to cover or to just hang out and talk about civic tech. Welcome to Civic Tech Chat. This time, we're looking into issues with hardware, supply chains, and what happens when those things come into contact with geopolitics and cold war legislation. Take yourself back to autumn. The global semiconductor supply chain, which supports a great deal of other industries, is facing a significant risk. Not a technological failure or a stock market mishap. It came in the form of a cold war era Dutch law and its interaction with a company called Nexperia. Today, we are talking through an analysis of what happened. We're looking at how a law designed to prevent starvation in the nineteen fifties was used to influence this industry recently. We'll cover things like the dual track intervention by the Dutch state, and what these events mean for public interest technology. To understand why this happened, we need to first understand the target, Nexperia. They produce mature node chips, things like diodes, transistors, and logic devices. These components are often low cost individually, but are ubiquitous and incredibly important. Xperia produces over 90,000,000,000 of them manually. A modern electric vehicle contains thousands of these discrete components controlling everything from window motors to battery management systems. Crucially, an Experia sits in a unique geopolitical position. It is the custodian of nearly a century of Dutch industrial heritage with roots tracing back to Phillips. Since around 2018, it it has been owned by WingTech Technology, a Shanghai based conglomerate. As a result, one could see Nexperia as a single point of failure for the European automotive industry. The Dutch government chose to take action, invoking the Goods Availability Act of 1952. Obviously, it has a name in Dutch, but my pronunciation skills there are quite lacking. The act was born out of national trauma, the hunger winter of World War two, where blockades cut off the Western Netherlands leading to starvation. The act was drafted in the early Cold War period, not as an industrial policy, but as a mechanism of survival in the event of a potential third world war. It was designed to let the government centrally manage essential physical commodities like coal and grain during a national emergency. For seventy three years, this law sat unused. But on September 30, the Dutch government utilized a broad definition within the act that interpreted goods to include not just physical objects, but property rights and corporate assets. Why invoke this in 2025? Geopolitics may have been afoot. The Nexperia crisis is inextricably linked to US export control policy. On the day the Dutch government invoked the act, The United States expanded its entity list with a new affiliates rule. Experia's parent company, WingTech, was already on that list. Without intervention, Nexperia would have been subject to restrictions. So the Dutch government faced a stark choice, allow Nexperia to be crippled by US trade policy or intervene to forcibly demonstrate corporate separation from its parent company in China. Simultaneously, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs reported receiving acute signals of serious government shortcomings. Internal whistleblowers alleged that Nexperia's CEO was attempting to strip assets, transfer intellectual property, and hollow out its headquarters. The Dutch state viewed these actions not just as fiduciary breaches, but as a direct threat to European strategic autonomy. So late this year, the Dutch government engaged in a dual track response. The first track being an executive order. Using the 1952 goods availability act, the minister of economic affairs placed Nexperia under state supervision. This effectively froze company assets and intellectual property in The Netherlands, preventing any changes without ministerial permission, which should satisfy US demands for separation. The second track happened simultaneously within their judiciary. Independent of that ministry, Experia's European management took their concerns to the enterprise chamber of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal. The court utilized its powers under Dutch inquiry law to immediately suspend Nexperia's CEO and appoint an independent temporary director. Beijing, however, reviewed this intervention as de facto nationalization of a strategic asset. Their response targeted the physical vulnerability of Nexperia's supply chain. While Nexperia's front end wafer fabrication process happens in Europe, the back end assembly, testing, and packaging largely occurs in facilities in China. On October 4, China imposed export controls on these Chinese subsidiaries. The impact on the automotive industry in Europe was significant. Companies like Volkswagen, BMW, and Stellantis are heavily reliant on just in time delivery, and they warned of imminent line stoppages. Inside the company, a bizarre corporate conflict also erupted. Chinese staff reportedly misappropriated physical company seals to lock out Dutch appointed management, and IT links between the continents were severed. By mid November, the stalemate was unsustainable. Following a diplomatic fall between Washington and Beijing, the Dutch government announced a de escalation. On November 19, the minister announced the suspension of the order under the goods availability act. It's important to note that this is a suspension rather than a full revocation. That would imply the government has the authority to reimpose the control quickly. In exchange, China lifted the export ban, and supply chains could, in theory, be restarted. However, while the government's track one was suspended, the judicial track two remains ongoing. At the time I wrote this script here in late twenty twenty five, the CEO remained suspended by the courts, and WingTech was in the process of appealing the case. This saga offers profound takeaways for those interested in public interest technology. First, it illustrates issues with derisking via seizure. The Dutch government's attempt to secure supply by removing influence from China resulted in immediate risk to their supply chain. It exposed that strategic autonomy can be an illusion when key parts of the physical process are located in territory where leverage can be a problem. Second, it reinforced that corporate governance is a critical layer in a technical stack, as one might call it. In this case, more than just being a silicon based product that they produced, it's wrapped in intellectual property rights and ownership structures as well. Corporate ownership can then be assumed as a thing that you can analyze as a potential point of failure as one looks for systemic vulnerabilities in a process like chip making. And finally, it highlights the danger of repurposing emergency powers for tech policy. Using a 1952 law meant to prevent famine to manage a twenty twenty five semiconductor crisis does highlight a lag between legal frameworks and technological progress. The precedent set also could introduce new volatility into global trade relations. Thanks for listening in on this episode of Civic Tech Chat. Do join us next time as we continue our exploration of that intersection of technology, policy, and public life. Visit us on the web at civictech.chat, or subscribe to us for content updates wherever it is you download your podcasts.