Australia faces mounting foreign tech and supply‑chain controls from China and the US

China has introduced two new legal measures—State Council Order 834, which expands the scope of investigations into industrial and supply‑chain data, and Order 835, which prohibits Chinese firms from cooperating with foreign legal actions deemed improper. The regulations turn supply‑chain transparency into a permission‑based activity and give Beijing a tool to block foreign investigations, as illustrated by the Ministry of Justice’s challenge to the EU’s probe of a Chinese security‑screening company.

Separately, the U.S. Commerce Department ordered AI developer Anthropic to suspend access to its latest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for all foreign nationals, citing national‑security concerns. The blanket restriction removed the models from Australian users and exposed the vulnerability of relying on frontier AI hosted abroad. Together, the developments showcase the growing legal and operational dilemmas for Australian firms that must satisfy overlapping compliance regimes from the United States, the European Union and China.