Three-year-old Tymofii was playing on a swing when an Iskander missile tore through his chest. His grandmother, standing three feet away, watched him bleed out in her arms. The shrapnel that killed him was guided by American microchips.
On 10 December, five lawsuits filed in Texas state court named Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments, and Mouser Electronics as defendants in what attorneys call a "merchants of death" case. The suits, filed on behalf of dozens of Ukrainian civilians by mass tort attorney Mikal Watts and law firm BakerHostetler, accuse the American technology giants of "willful ignorance" as their chips flowed through third-party distributors into Russian missiles and Iranian-made drones.
"Stop the chips, you stop the war," Watts told reporters in Washington. "The United States has provided $175 billion in security assistance to Ukraine. But most of the damage we're seeing there now is being caused by missiles and drones guided to their targets by American chip technology."
American chips found in Russian missiles
Before filing, Watts and his team spent nine days in Ukraine, visiting five attack sites and meeting families who lost loved ones to weapons powered by American components.
"They've hit children's hospitals. They've hit elementary schools. They've hit residential towers that have nothing to do with military applications. These are war crimes," Watts said.
At each site, the team opened the remnants of drones and missiles, photographing the chips inside. "Quality Control Pass," read stickers in English. American ID numbers. Texas Instruments logos. Intel components.
"The thing I've learned after 48 hours in Ukraine is that this reign of terror has no military objective whatsoever," Watts said. "It's designed to subjugate an entire population, to get them to quit."
Five attacks, US semiconductor components confirmed
The lawsuits center on five strikes between 2023 and 2025:
March 2023 – Rzhyshchiv: Shahed drones struck a high school dormitory, killing six including 17-year-old Roman, who was studying to become a chef.
April 2023 – Uman: A Kh-101 cruise missile hit a nine-story apartment building. Galyna Bereziyuk, 61, died in her home. No military installation existed within 15 miles.
June 2023 – Kryvyi Rih: A Kh-101 hit a humanitarian warehouse distributing water. Twenty-one-year-old Anton Babich and 17-year-old Andrii were killed.
July 2024 – Kyiv: A Kh-101 struck Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital. Dr. Olha Babicheva, chief of nephrology, was tending to children on dialysis when the missile hit.
April 2025 – Kryvyi Rih: An Iskander-M hit a children's playground with cluster munitions. Three-year-old Tymofii, 15-year-old Alina Kutcenko, and her boyfriend Danylo Nikitskyi were killed. Danylo had called his mother minutes before.
"Make the missiles stop"
The families' message was unanimous. Natalia Smilianets, a plaintiff from Uman, told Watts: "Because it shouldn't be like this. Young people, children shouldn't die. Every person has a right to life. I am a peaceful person. I am against the war. And we should stop it."
"To a person, they all said, 'We don't care about the money, just make the missiles stop. And tell these companies this is not okay. And make them change their way,'" Watts recounted.
Dr. Babicheva, appearing by video from Kyiv, recalled the morning of the hospital attack. "According to the protocol, we brought the majority of the children downstairs. But six of them were undergoing hemodialysis." She stayed to disconnect them from the machines. "I could hear an explosion, and I don't remember anything after that."
Nurse Viktoriia Didovets threw her body between a collapsing ceiling and the children she was caring for. Her hip was crushed. She spent 65 days immobilized. Not a single child in their care died that day.
35 years of failed US export controls
Export restrictions on dual-use technology began after Tiananmen Square in 1989. Iran has faced technology sanctions since 1992. Russia since 2014, with comprehensive bans after the 2022 invasion. Yet chip after chip, missile after missile, the American components keep arriving.
"For 35 years, this technology has been re-routed to bad corporate actors," Watts said. "You can literally see the American technology chips that are found in these things."
A year-long Senate investigation reached the same conclusion. In September 2024, Senator Richard Blumenthal hauled Texas Instruments, Intel, and AMD representatives before Congress.
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"Looking the other way when you know your products continue to empower Russian slaughter is not just morally dubious, it is against the law," Blumenthal told the executives. "The illicit flood of semiconductors into Russia is enabled by the knowing neglect or willful ignorance of American companies. It borders on intentional disregard."
"Over 30 years ago, the Ukrainians agreed to give up their nuclear protections against this exact type of war in exchange for security assurances from America," said Robert Julian of BakerHostetler. "Now we're standing behind the families who have not gotten the benefit of those assurances because they're being bombed to death."
Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments respond
When Texas Instruments investors proposed requiring the company to track where its chips end up, the board's response was blunt: "Complete traceability of such items to end use and prevention of product misuse and diversion is unachievable."
In congressional testimony, Texas Instruments assistant general counsel Shannon Thompson said the company "strongly opposes the use of our chips in Russian military equipment" and any such shipments "are illicit and unauthorized," Bloomberg reported.
An Intel spokesperson said the company "does not conduct business in Russia and promptly suspended all shipments to customers in both Russia and Belarus following the outbreak of war." AMD did not immediately respond; the company has previously said it complies with sanctions, according to Bloomberg.
Mouser Electronics said: "We deeply respect the legal process and will respond to this matter in court, versus the media."
Watts rejected the deflection. "If we can put a 'Find My Friend' on our iPhones, certainly we have the technological capability for chip manufacturers to trace where their product is ending up. They are able to do it. You can't just put your head in the sand and pretend that you don't know."
Lawsuit seeks corporate accountability for chip exports
The lawsuits seek compensatory and exemplary damages for corporate negligence—failures in export control compliance, distributor screening, and diversion prevention.
"Part of the purpose of this press conference is to embarrass them into doing what is right," Watts said. "If they don't change their practices, we're going to stay on them and make it so expensive they're going to wish they did."
The opioids litigation offers a model. Watts spent five years on cases against Purdue Pharmaceuticals and distributors like Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen, recovering over $58 billion.
"This is very similar," Watts said. In the opioid cases, manufacturers faced lawsuits; here, it's Texas Instruments, AMD, and Intel. In the opioid cases, distributors paid $26 billion; here, it's Mouser Electronics. "They are the distributor who has substantial liability for distributing products in violation of US law."
Vadim Medvedev, a partner at Ukrainian law firm Avellum who traveled to Washington, put it in stark terms: "Across all over Ukraine, families go to bed at night not knowing whether they will wake up in the morning. There are two pillars for Russia's military ability to do that. The first is financial resources. The second is access to technology."
He came all the way from Kyiv, arriving the day before and leaving the same day, to deliver one message: "We believe that the rule of law should prevail over the rule of force."
Watts was blunt about corporate accountability: "These companies need to understand that their decisions made in boardrooms in Texas and California are directly killing innocent civilians in Ukraine. Full stop."
