Senior Official Says US Planning More AI Actions, Hints at Enforcement

Buchanan, speaking during an event this week hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, didn’t give specifics about the kind of AI measures the administration is hoping to instill before Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20, but he said his team is still working.

“Forty-two days to go,” he said. “But who’s counting?”

His comments came the same day the Bureau of Industry and Security sent a new AI-related export control rule for interagency review (see 2412100012) and the same day Matthew Axelrod, the agency’s top export enforcement official, said companies should expect more export-related penalties soon (see 2412100043)

Buchanan declined to comment on a reported U.S. investigation of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company for potentially violating export controls against Huawei (see 2411120011), saying the White House isn’t involved in those probes. But he suggested the U.S. could announce more enforcement actions before Biden leaves.

“It's obvious that this is an area where we have to continue to act to ensure the effectiveness" of export controls, Buchanan said. “We'll see what we can do before we are done here.”

He added that he's in favor of strong enforcement, specifically for advanced AI chip technologies. “This is an area that I think is fundamental to our policy, is making sure we are enforcing these in a really robust way,” Buchanan said. “And if we don't enforce them in a robust way, they will threaten the strategic logic of the policy itself.”

The latest U.S. chip controls on China added new export license requirements for certain high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that the Biden administration hadn't addressed in previous versions of the controls (see 2412030041 and 2412020016). Buchanan said HBM is “vital” for AI-related chips, and he expects it to be a significant part of future chip-related export controls by the Trump administration.

“I think it's something that the Trump team will, I'm sure, look at and say, did they go far enough? Did they go too far?” he said. “And they can figure out their own take on the technology.”

He also said the administration wants to make sure it’s not hindering exports of advanced AI chips in ways that unnecessarily harm American companies or national security. It’s balancing that effort with making sure, “above all, the chips are not diverted to China.”

The Commerce Department recently approved Microsoft exports of certain AI chips to a Microsoft-run facility in the United Arab Emirates as part of a partnership between the American tech company and UAE AI firm G42, Axios reported this month. That approval is part of an effort by the U.S. to “elbow China out of the UAE's rapidly expanding tech industry,” the report said, and “disperse U.S.-developed AI technology around the world to counter” China.

Buchanan declined to say whether the U.S. had granted those specific licenses to Microsoft, but said “I think it is fair to say our companies have partnered with nations in that region to do some work there.”

“We recognize that there is a degree to which AI is going to be global, and American companies are global businesses, and there's reasons why you want to have at least some data centers around the world,” he said. “We are trying to build a policy that allows for that while also making sure we are protecting U.S. interests and making sure that a lot of chips don't end up in a [People’s Liberation Army of China] data center.”

Buchanan added that the incoming Trump administration will have many important decisions to make about U.S. policy on AI.

“They are being given, I think, a fascinating task,” he said. “A lot of the really vital decisions on AI, on chips and the like, are still to come. I happen to think a lot of those are places where even Republicans and Democrats, who disagree on many, many things, can agree, and we have done everything we can to ensure an orderly, professional transition on these points.”