China Select Committee Chair Hoping for AI Diffusion Replacement Rule 'Soon'
House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., said June 3 that he hopes the Trump administration will release a new AI diffusion export control rule “soon" to replace the one it recently rescinded.
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The administration announced last month that it would be replacing the Biden administration’s “overly complex” AI diffusion rule with something simpler (see 2505070039 and 2505130018).
“My belief is that the Trump administration will build on that and hopefully get a new rule in place soon,” Moolenaar said at the 2025 Center for a New American Security National Security conference. While the administration’s new AI deals with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia present a “great opportunity” for the U.S. (see 2505210051), “there need to be commitments made to safeguard that technology. There needs to be verification and the ability to ensure that it doesn't go into the Chinese hands.”
Moolenaar has been pursuing several complementary efforts to protect American AI technology. While attending the recent Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore, he received assurances from Singaporean officials that they are working to prevent advanced U.S. computing chips from ending up in China. In April, his committee described Singapore as having a “high risk” of diversion to China (see 2504170040).
While in Singapore, "we mentioned in a number of discussions with leaders there that we need to have strong relationships based on trust, and I believe they're working in good faith to make sure that they don't, in some way, allow chip technology into China,” Moolenaar said. “I think we need to do that with any of the partners that we're working with.”
Moolenaar touted a bill he is co-sponsoring that would require export-controlled advanced chips to contain location verification mechanisms to prevent their diversion (see 2505150035). “There is technology where you can make sure that you can locate where the chips end up, because that's one of the concerns, that you may ship something, and a business may ship something one place, and it totally ends up in a different place,” he said. “And so we need to be able to verify that and then hold the private sector accountable for that as well.”
Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., also said he believes there needs to be guardrails in place for exports of sensitive chips. "I'm a strong believer in our export controls," he said during the conference. "I feel like the export controls have been effective."
Torres acknowledged that Beijing took a significant step in its AI and technology competition with the U.S. when Chinese startup DeepSeek announced a powerful AI model in January (see 2505020043 and 2504160039). But as AI technologies continue to develop, Torres said China will need "more and more" advanced chips, and export controls could keep China from acquiring them.
"I'm skeptical that China can sustain the AI breakthrough without sufficient access to computational resources," Torres said. "And so we have reason to believe that the export controls are imposing a ceiling on China's AI competitiveness. It's limiting China's ability to scale AI and compete with the United States at the frontier."
Moolenaar also said he continues to work with the House Foreign Affairs and Financial Services committees to advance a bill that would restrict U.S. outbound investment in China (see 2505070044). “We need feedback from people to make sure we get it right,” he said.
He added that U.S. dollars shouldn't be funding entities that are "somehow partnering" with the Chinese military. "There should be red flags there," he said, mentioning the possibility of a new U.S. government list of companies that would be off limits from receiving certain American investment.
"We have entity lists, but we need to make sure that we're identifying specific companies that should not receive American investments," Moolenaar said. "But we also have to look at strategic sectors, because so much of our American dollars are going to fund aspects of the Chinese military because of some of these advanced technologies."
The bill he is working on "has a combined approach that looks at sectors as well as entities who are entities of concern," he said.
On another China-related issue, Moolenaar doesn’t believe the Trump administration should give ByteDance another extension to comply with a 2024 law that requires the Chinese company to divest TikTok or face a U.S. ban on the popular social media application. ByteDance is hesitating to sell TikTok despite receiving “a number of viable offers” for the app, so the U.S. might need to let TikTok “go dark” to pressure ByteDance to reach a deal, Moolenaar said.
Trump already has given ByteDance two 75-day extensions. He said last month that he would be willing to give ByteDance more time to find a buyer (see 2505050041).