Senators Push Commerce Dept. to Boost AI Chip Controls
Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., urged the Commerce Department Feb. 3 to strengthen export controls following the recent “breakthrough development” of an advanced artificial intelligence model by Chinese startup DeepSeek.
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In a letter to commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick, the lawmakers said a loophole in export controls imposed in 2022 helped DeepSeek train its R1 model by allowing it to acquire advanced American AI chips, including Nvidia’s H800 and possibly the higher-performing Nvidia H100.
“The Biden administration moved to close this loophole, but through aggressive and shameless lobbying, Nvidia and other chipmakers wrangled a delay in the correction rule for over a year, allowing Chinese companies to stockpile U.S. AI chips like the H800,” the senators wrote. “At the same time, industry shipped tens of thousands of restricted advanced chips like the H100 to shady brokers in Singapore and other countries that then smuggled them into [China]. This was a dangerous mistake: If our export controls had been implemented without delay and properly enforced, DeepSeek would likely not have been able to train R1 as effectively, and U.S. AI leadership would be more secure today."
To bolster AI-related export controls on China, the senators recommend that Commerce resist attempts by U.S. chipmakers to weaken a new rule, published in January, regulating exports of advanced AI chips (see 2501130026). They also call for restricting exports of Nvidia’s H20 chip and similar products that China could use to deploy already-trained AI models.
To clamp down on chip smuggling, the senators want Commerce to issue know-your-customer rules so U.S. companies “are not doing business with cutout companies that can easily be identified as aliases of already-blacklisted” Chinese military companies. The senators also suggest adding Changxin Memory Technology (CXMT) to Commerce’s Entity List because of the Chinese company’s advances in memory.
In an e-mailed statement, an Nvidia spokesperson said the Warren-Hawley approach wouldn’t stop copycat or “fast follower” models like DeepSeek’s “but would restrict consumer products.” Further controls would “only surrender the China market to local technology companies, with ripple effects worldwide,” the statement says.
Commerce had no immediate comment on the letter, which came as the Senate Commerce Committee prepares to vote on Lutnick’s nomination Feb. 5. The White House didn’t comment on a similar letter that the leaders of the House Select Committee on China sent to National Security Adviser Michael Waltz Jan. 30 (see 2501300067). Lutnick said at his Jan. 29 confirmation hearing that he wants to "stop helping" China compete with the U.S. (see 2501290041).
The Warren-Hawley letter came just days after Hawley introduced a bill that would ban AI technology exports to China, bar U.S. companies from conducting AI research in China or with Chinese companies, and prohibit U.S. companies from investing money in Chinese AI development. Hawley’s Decoupling America’s Artificial Intelligence Capabilities from China Act was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which he is a member.