Word.ws English Dictionary

silicon curtain

silicon curtain noun: a legal barrier to the transfer of technology and the sale of advanced computer equipment between China and the West.

Noun

silicon curtain (plural not attested)

  1. (no plural, sometimes preceded by the) A legal barrier to the transfer of technology and the sale of advanced computer equipment between China and the West.
    • We hear also from Huawei’s founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfei, who explains that while the company doesn’t want to exist behind a “silicon curtain,” cut off from global suppliers, it is readying its own operating system to replace the one it used to buy from Google.2019 November 11, Carolynn Look, Jeff Black, “Peering Through the Silicon Curtain Between the U.S. and China”, in Bloomberg News
    • Pence went on to say that America did not seek a technological decoupling from China. But other parts of that speech—and some of the actions taken by the Trump administration in the months since—conjure images of a silicon curtain descending across the world.2021 February, Eric Boehm, “A Silicon Curtain Descends”, in Reason, published 2020

Origin of silicon curtain

From silicon (“computing”) + curtain, by analogy with Iron Curtain.

Words that rhyme with silicon curtain

Questions about silicon curtain

What does silicon curtain mean?
Silicon curtain means a legal barrier to the transfer of technology and the sale of advanced computer equipment between China and the West.
What part of speech is silicon curtain?
Silicon curtain is a noun.

Words near silicon curtain in the dictionary

  1. silicon carbide
  2. silicon carbides
  3. silicon chip
  4. silicon chips
  5. silicon copper
  6. silicon curtain
  7. silicon dioxide
  8. silicon disk
  9. silicon disks
  10. Silicon Docks
  11. Silicon Dreams

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: silicon curtain (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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