Technology giant Apple is following a very risky and surprising strategy to overcome the global memory chip crisis.

According to the latest reports published by the Financial Times, the company is seeking special permission from the Trump administration to purchase chips from the Chinese memory manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), which the Pentagon blacklisted due to its military relations.

As artificial investments intelligence boom, giant manufacturers in the industry shift their capacities to information centers, creating a rare bottleneck in the consumer electronics market.

Apple, which has recently reflected the cost of this crisis on its product prices, has been carrying out intense lobbying activities on the Washington front while looking for a solution in Chinese suppliers.

Memory Crisis Backed Apple into a Corner

The fact that technology giants have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on artificial intelligence infrastructures in the last year has completely disrupted the stability in the semiconductor market.

The industry’s three largest memory manufacturers, American Micron, South Korean Samsung and SK Hynix, are shifting their production lines to artificial intelligence-focused High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) chips, which have much higher profit margins.

This being the case, a huge gap emerges in the supply of classical DRAM memories required for smartphones and computers.

We have seen the reflections of this crisis clearly in Apple products recently.

What CEO Tim Cook described as a cost increase not seen in many years was directly reflected on the consumer.

The company increased the price of the M5 MacBook Pro model with 1 TB storage by $ 300 overnight, while increasing the price of the entry-level MacBook Neo model by $ 100.

Likewise, all new iPad Pro models are sold for $200 more than last week.

Apple sees Chinese manufacturers as the only way out to rein in this unsustainable cost increase and diversify its supply chain.

CXMT and the Pentagon’s 1260H Blacklist

ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), with which Apple wants to sit at the table, is known as China’s largest DRAM manufacturer and aims to fill the gap in the market by rapidly increasing its capacity.

However, there is a huge political drawback. CXMT is on the Pentagon’s blacklist of Chinese Military Companies, known as “1260H”, for allegedly having contacts with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

Technically, there is no strict law preventing Apple from trading with a company on the 1260H list.But being on this list carries a huge prestige risk for companies and cuts off their ability to do business with the US Department of Defense.

Apple’s real fear is that, after reaching an agreement with CXMT, the US Department of Commerce may place this company on a much stricter embargo list called the “Entity List”.

Therefore, before signing the trade agreement, Apple is trying to get some kind of guarantee from the Trump administration and officials in Washington that CXMT will not be included in the Entity List.

Apple, which has experienced similar crises in the past, planned to purchase memory for iPhones from the Chinese company YMTC in 2022, but had to step back due to political pressure.

Now, the chip crisis is much deeper, forcing Apple to take political risks.

The technology and finance world is eagerly awaiting how the Trump administration will respond to Apple’s request.