Lawmakers Hear Mixed Feedback on How Best to Protect AI Tech Lead Over China
The U.S. needs to better enforce its existing export controls on advanced AI chips and chip equipment while bolstering its ability to screen Chinese investments that may be looking to evade those restrictions, several witnesses told Congress this week. But another witness said the current U.S. chip controls have so far failed and called on the government to rework its export control strategy.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Helen Toner, director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, said the U.S. should lean into the series of chip-related export control rules it has published over the past several years. She said access to advanced chips is the “biggest advantage” the U.S. has in its ongoing AI technology competition with China.
“I think the export controls, while they have been imperfectly applied and imperfectly enforced, I think they have been a huge success, or at least had the signs of being a huge success,” Toner said during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing May 7. She said they will work “if we continue to enforce them and keep them in place.”
Toner pointed to DeepSeek, the Chinese startup that announced a powerful AI model in January, sparking concerns from some lawmakers about whether export controls have failed to prevent China from acquiring advanced U.S. chips (see 2505020043 and 2504160039). She said DeepSeek was able to train its model by importing U.S. chips during a gap in 2023 before they were subject to increased restrictions by the Bureau of Industry and Security.
Since those chips have been restricted, “they are now no longer able to buy the kind of chips that they use to train that system,” Toner said. She added that the CEO of DeepSeek has since “made very clear” that access to advanced chips is the “biggest limitation for him.”
The U.S. also needs to build on controls for chip-manufacturing equipment, Toner said, calling it a “huge piece that often gets neglected.” BIS published a rule in December that placed new restrictions on certain foreign-made chip equipment (see 2412020016 and 2412030022).
“Preventing those and actually enforcing the protections on those would also help protect the U.S. advantage,” she said.
Benjamin Jensen, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was more critical of U.S. export control efforts so far, saying they have failed to address Chinese evasion and have allowed Beijing to continue to buy sensitive chips and software.
“Export controls have utterly been futile up to this point,” he said. “Through loopholes, third-party countries and subsidies, they keep advancing, while American firms face regulatory burdens and shrinking market access.”
He said the U.S. may need to “rethink” its strategy. “The current approach is not enough. Export controls and AI diffusion policy do more economic harm than good.”
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chair of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, AI and the Internet, appeared to side more with Toner, saying export controls have “helped us keep that edge” over China. Issa said he wants companies to work more closely with the government to protect sensitive technologies, and suggested the government may have to mandate that closer cooperation.
“Isn't it fair to say that, although we want it to be cooperatively [and] we want it to be voluntary,” he said, “access to those very powerful chips that we will not let our enemies have, in fact, creates a bargain in which you really must work with the government to make sure that you're safeguarding the fruit of those very powerful chips?”
Other witnesses said the U.S. should build on or maintain its AI-related investment restrictions against China. Nicholas Andersen, president of Invictus International Consulting and a former Energy Department official, said American companies building dual-use technologies have become a “top target” of China, “yet our national defenses remain inconsistent.” He specifically said the U.S. doesn’t “vet outbound investments that may expose sensitive technology.”
The Treasury Department prohibits certain sensitive U.S. outbound investments in China, but it doesn’t review each individual investment subject to those rules (see 2504250019).
Andersen said Congress should codify and build on those restrictions. “We do not hold venture capital or private equity firms accountable for facilitating access to strategic industries by foreign adversaries,” he said. “This must change.”
Christopher Mohr, president of the Software and Information Industry Association, said there’s “no perfect solution” to prevent the theft of American trade secrets, but Congress “has tools that it can and should develop to further protect American AI development.” He called on lawmakers to make sure the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. “continues to serve as an effective way to address trade secret risks by making sure that its scope of review remains adequate to address those risks.”