US Government Sanctions Deepcool Over Supplying to Blacklisted Russian Firms

[btarunr]

The US Department of the Treasury on Wednesday, sanctioned 16 Chinese tech companies involved in supporting the Russian wartime economy, or supplying goods to blacklisted Russian firms, as the war in Ukraine rages on. A surprising name on this list is Beijing Deepcool Industries, the company behind the popular PC cooling, casing, and power supply brand Deepcool. A US State Department release announcing the sanctions, described Deepcool as supplying $1 million worth common high-priority items list (CHPL) goods. These are items that could directly or indirectly support the Russian war-effort in Ukraine. "BEIJING DEEPCOOL INDUSTRIES CO LTD is a PRC-based company involved in the supply of over $1 million worth of CHPL items to Russian companies, including the U.S.-designated, Russia-based AKTSIONERNOE OBSHCHESTVO TASKOM and OOO NOVYI AI TI PROEKT," the State Department release says.

Meanwhile, the executive aspect of the sanctions are handled by the Treasury Department, which restricts all transactions by US firms to the 16 newly sanctioned Chinese companies, which include Deepcool. What this means is that the US-end of Deepcool must immediately cease operations, as it cannot transact any business with its parent company in China. Sale of Deepcool product will also stop, as US residents cannot conduct any business with the company. This could also mean that the US-based subsidiary of Deepcool may not be in a position to provide aftersales support to existing customers in the country.



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[Onasi]

This is turning into a farce, honestly. Now it actually negatively affects even US citizens for… no reason? At this point, I think US should just state plainly that any trade whatsoever with Russia is haram, since every product under the sun, if you bend over backwards enough, can be said to “support the war effort”. Why not? Hell, let’s even go against the humanitarian principles of UN charter and sanction food and medical goods. If you’re gonna go full on - do so.

This, by the way, is going to do as much to stop the war as all the previous sanctions- nothing. But it will be remembered quite vividly by the Russian populace as it hits them far worse than the intended targets. This current BS shall pass, the government will inevitably change, but such shortsighted moves will pretty much guarantee negative consequences for foreign relations going forward.

tl:dr USA, Russia, China - all of their governments are absolute morons and the world honestly would have been better off without “superpowers”.

 

[Konceptz]

this blows....DeepCool products are actually pretty good..

 

[usiname]

That way the Russians won't be able to build high end gaming PCs and will be left with old ones that are good enough to play CSGO2 at 240 fps instead of a modern 360 fps gaming PC and their military training won't be top level

 

[Onasi]

"BEIJING DEEPCOOL INDUSTRIES CO LTD is a PRC-based company involved in the supply of over $1 million worth of CHPL items to Russian companies, including the U.S.-designated, Russia-based AKTSIONERNOE OBSHCHESTVO TASKOM and OOO NOVYI AI TI PROEKT," the State Department release says.

Okay, this is actually even stupider than I thought. I ran the companies and looked things up via contacts of mine and… Well, Таском (TASKOM) is a fairly small logistics company from Kaluga, of all places. I guess the idea here is that maybe the military uses their warehouses? And Новый IT (NOVIY AI TI) is… literally just a small PC part distributor. Really. Not even a significant one, not a government backed one, they just trade PC parts via several marketplaces. That’s it.

So now because of this DEEPCOOL has to exit the US market? Have I mentioned already that this is a farce?

 

[Assimilator]

But it will be remembered quite vividly by the Russian populace as it hits them far worse than the intended targets.

Uh yeah, that's one of the points of sanctions: make the sanctioned party's general public realise what's going on. Your rulers may be able to censor the truth of their dirty wars, but they can't censor empty store shelves. It's not like DeepCool products are staple foods FFS.

"BEIJING DEEPCOOL INDUSTRIES CO LTD is a PRC-based company involved in the supply of over $1 million worth of CHPL items to Russian companies, including the U.S.-designated, Russia-based AKTSIONERNOE OBSHCHESTVO TASKOM and OOO NOVYI AI TI PROEKT," the State Department release says.

Okay, this is actually even stupider than I thought. I ran the companies and looked things up via contacts of mine and… Well, Таском (TASKOM) is a fairly small logistics company from Kaluga, of all places. I guess the idea here is that maybe the military uses their warehouses? And Новый IT (NOVIY AI TI) is… literally just a small PC part distributor. Really. Not even a significant one, not a government backed one, they just trade PC parts via several marketplaces. That’s it.

Tough shit, DeepCool failed to take sufficient care in who they deal with. Their problem. If they want to trade in the USA, they need to start taking that care.

So now because of this DEEPCOOL has to exit the US market?

Yeah, it's called "you operate in the USA and break USA law, you get smacked for it".

 

[Onasi]

Uh yeah, that's one of the points of sanctions: make the sanctioned party's general public realise what's going on. Your rulers may be able to censor the truth of their dirty wars, but they can't censor empty store shelves. It's not like DeepCool products are staple foods FFS.

I am aware. Well, I am aware that that’s the theory. In practice, this approach has worked… uh, approximately zero times? I talk with Russians quite a lot. Finding one who “doesn’t realize what’s going on” is a challenge in and of itself. The idea that they are all brainwashed idiots is hilariously wrong. They understand things just as well as everyone else. I really don’t think that’s the issue here.

But I have no interest of going full political discourse here, won’t really be productive since I would guess that the vast majority of TPUs worldwide audience has a rather odd view on what’s going on internally in Russia these days and what the Russian public actually is like. As such, any discussion of this nature will boil down to stereotypes, headlines ripped from the media and hilarious anecdotal examples.

 

[Chomiq]

They knew the sanctions were in place, they did the business anyway. Well now they have to face the consequences.

Few companies are under investigation in Poland for suspected increased trading with Kazachstan which suggests that the Kazach companies are used as proxies for getting the goods into Russia and Belarus. Granted, none of them are tech related but still, bypassing sanctions is bypassing sanctions. Another method is to get cargo into Belarus with destination of Kazachstan but then the cargo is offloaded in Minsk or St Petersburg and loaded into different trucks and our customs agencies loose track of it.

Just because two listed companies are "small" doesn't mean they have small profits generated from importing sanctioned goods. That's how proxies work, you put some no name company as a middle man and it won't show until you see that the small middleman is suddenly making millions from importing.

 

[Chrispy_]

Oh COME ON, Deepcool!

You don't sell to terrorists.

Either the press coverage from 194 nations on earth is a carefully-coordinated, perfectly synchronised propaganda/conspiracy, or Putin really is an international war criminal.

 

[AusWolf]

Oh no! The Russians are watercooling their gaming PCs now! What are we gonna do? /s

Tough shit, DeepCool failed to take sufficient care in who they deal with. Their problem. If they want to trade in the USA, they need to start taking that care.

What's wrong with trading with a small PC part distributor that by fat chance, happens to be in Russia?

 

[ArcticFox]

Does anyone know where to find out who the other tech companies are that were sanctioned along with DeepCool?

 

[SirB]

Good. Glad to see this.
How long do retailers have to remove deepcool stuff?

 

[R0H1T]

Oh COME ON, Deepcool!

You don't sell to terrorists.

Huh really? Are they terrorists if you sell WMD weapons to them?

 

[SirB]

Oh no! The Russians are watercooling their gaming PCs now! What are we gonna do? /s


What's wrong with trading with a small PC part distributor that by fat chance, happens to be in Russia?

No, deepcool is cooling warehouses of servers spreading viruses and propaganda around the world. Anything that hurts/annoys/defunds ANY ruzzian, is a good thing.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Huh really? Are they terrorists if you sell WMD weapons to them?

Why was uranium one not a problem but Chinese made CPU heat sinks named "Assassin" a problem?

 

[R0H1T]

Why was uranium one not a problem but Chinese made CPU heat sinks named "Assassin" a problem?

Never heard of them, but tbf to normal citizens across the world it'd be so much better if our cuckoo leaders were sent to Mars with this guy!

Spoiler

 

[AusWolf]

No, deepcool is cooling warehouses of servers spreading viruses and propaganda around the world.

Where did you get that from? And how do you impose 100% control over who the product you sell ends up with? You can't.

Anything that hurts/annoys/defunds ANY ruzzian, is a good thing.

Any Russian? Did you know that there is 144 million of them? If you seriously want to hurt all of them for no other reason than being fed some propaganda yourself, then you must be a horrible human being.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Never heard of them, but tbf to normal citizens across the world it'd be so much better if our cuckoo leaders were sent to Mars with this guy!

Spoiler

I was kind of hoping to get a chuckle or two from my comment due to it's absurdity before the thread implodes and gets locked but seriously it seems the path of conflict escalation is increasing between nations and this worries me. Sanctions on DeepCool is just another straw regardless if it's justified or not.

 

[AusWolf]

I was kind of hoping to get a chuckle or two from my comment due to it's absurdity before the thread implodes and gets locked but seriously it seems the path of conflict escalation is increasing between nations and this worries me. Sanctions on DeepCool is just another straw regardless if it's justified or not.

The problem is that it's not absurd anymore (well, it is for us, thinking individuals, but not for the masses), as the opening article demonstrates.

We're at a stage when governments sanction trades with gaming gear, such as liquid cooling, and regular citizens jump at each other's throats over how much they hate, or how much others should hate an entire nation. It kind of feels like the world has been in this exact state before, and it's really sad.

 

[A Computer Guy]

The problem is that it's not absurd anymore, as the opening article demonstrates. We're at a stage when governments sanction trades with gaming gear, such as liquid cooling, and regular citizens jump at each other's throats over how much they hate, or how much others should hate an entire nation. It kind of feels like the world has been in this exact state before, and it's really sad.

Many think the dystopian nightmare will be realized when cities are in ruin and in ashes like in endless Hollywood movies but proceeding that is the loss of empathy with each other as human beings is the true dystopian nightmare that ends society. I'm going to exit before spinning too far off topic.

 

[N3utro]

I thought this was stupid at first but it's actually smart. The US is forcing companies to make a choice between the US and the russian market, and the US market is much bigger than the russian one.

Though the chinese companies have no interest in stopping selling to Russia, they could just do it through black market instead.

 

[R0H1T]

No they're asking them to make a choice between China & the US, Russia is just a side track in all of this!

The war isn't between who's "right or wrong" although there's fair arguments on both sides, it's about who gets the bigger piece of the pie & arguably the bakery too.

 

[Caring1]

No, deepcool is cooling warehouses of servers spreading viruses and propaganda around the world. Anything that hurts/annoys/defunds ANY ruzzian, is a good thing.

The same can be said about America, lets not make this political and keep on topic.

 

[Assimilator]

I am aware. Well, I am aware that that’s the theory. In practice, this approach has worked… uh, approximately zero times? I talk with Russians quite a lot. Finding one who “doesn’t realize what’s going on” is a challenge in and of itself. The idea that they are all brainwashed idiots is hilariously wrong. They understand things just as well as everyone else. I really don’t think that’s the issue here.

Because an anecdote about the handful of Russians you've spoken to is obviously a completely accurate representation of all 144 million Russian citizens as a whole. Right? Right?

What's wrong with trading with a small PC part distributor that by fat chance, happens to be in Russia?

Do you really think the State Department has time to arbitrarily sanction random mom & pop stores? Because they don't, they have much bigger fish to fry. Fish like, say, a front company operated by a hostile regime in an attempt to bypass sanctions against said regime or its friends.

And yes, sanctioned regimes will use any and every avenue they can to get around sanctions - it's a game of whack-a-mole for the sanctioning party. The more moles (companies) the sanctionee has, the better their chance of getting past the sanctions.

 

[evernessince]

That way the Russians won't be able to build high end gaming PCs and will be left with old ones that are good enough to play CSGO2 at 240 fps instead of a modern 360 fps gaming PC and their military training won't be top level

Lets just forget the fact that nearly every modern weapon has chips in it. Mind you everyone here is making the assumption that DeepCool was only selling PC coolers when I've yet to see a source for what they were actually caught selling. It could very well be that they were funneling sanctioned goods they don't normally sell for the profits. Happens all the time. I don't see CPU coolers or any coolers on the sanctioned goods list either: https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/a...t-controls-list-of-common-high-priority-items

This, by the way, is going to do as much to stop the war as all the previous sanctions- nothing.

On the contrary, sanctions are very effective. Just look at the difference between north and south korea. If they didn't matter, Russia and China wouldn't be raising a stink about them. Russia's economy has transitioned over to a wartime economy. Their GPD and economy right now is highly reliant on the war (or wars if we get to that point) continuing.

Okay, this is actually even stupider than I thought. I ran the companies and looked things up via contacts of mine and… Well, Таском (TASKOM) is a fairly small logistics company from Kaluga, of all places. I guess the idea here is that maybe the military uses their warehouses? And Новый IT (NOVIY AI TI) is… literally just a small PC part distributor. Really. Not even a significant one, not a government backed one, they just trade PC parts via several marketplaces. That’s it.

You are operating on the premise that these companies are only selling PC parts but just because they sell PC parts to the general public doesn't mean they can't turn around and sell sanctioned goods for the cash.

I should point out that PC parts and specifically coolers are not on the control list: https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/a...t-controls-list-of-common-high-priority-items

You can see that list is very specifically curated, it's not something I look and think it ridiculous. If DeepCool sold goods to China on that list, it deserves to be sanctioned.

The same can be said about America, lets not make this political and keep on topic.

This is really whitewashing the degree and goal to which each is doing so. It's an argument that pretends there's no scale or goal to actions.

Do you really think the State Department has time to arbitrarily sanction random mom & pop stores? Because they don't, they have much bigger fish to fry. Fish like, say, a front company operated by a hostile regime in an attempt to bypass sanctions against said regime or its friends.

And yes, sanctioned regimes will use any and every avenue they can to get around sanctions - it's a game of whack-a-mole for the sanctioning party. The more moles (companies) the sanctionee has, the better their chance of getting past the sanctions.

Exactly. Filtering goods through proxies and other companies jumping in due to greed are common when sanctions are involved.