White House Calls for New Chip Equipment Controls, ‘Creative’ Enforcement

The 28-page plan, released July 23, calls on the Commerce Department to plug “loopholes” in existing controls on chip making equipment by addressing their subsystems. While the U.S. and its allies impose restrictions on “major systems necessary for semiconductor manufacturing,” they do “not control many of the component sub-systems,” the plan said.

“We must continue to lead the world with pathbreaking research and new inventions in semiconductor manufacturing, but the United States must also prevent our adversaries from using our innovations to their own ends in ways that undermine our national security,” it said. “This requires new measures to address gaps in semiconductor manufacturing export controls, coupled with enhanced enforcement.”

The plan calls on Commerce, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the National Security Council to “pursue creative approaches to export control enforcement.” All three government bodies should work with industry to “explore leveraging new and existing location verification features on advanced AI compute to ensure that the chips are not in countries of concern,” the plan said.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is hoping to pass a bill that would require export-controlled advanced computing chips to contain location verification mechanisms (see 2507220038), although some technology policy experts argued that a chip location mandate would be difficult to implement and could push trading partners to use non-U.S. chips that don't have those same location features (see 2507170040).

Commerce officials also should work closer with the intelligence community to improve its chip export controls enforcement, the plan said, including by monitoring emerging AI technology developments to “ensure full coverage of possible countries or regions where chips are being diverted.” More monitoring could be used to “expand and increase end-use monitoring in countries where there is a high risk of diversion” of advanced U.S. AI chips, the plan said, “especially where there is not a Bureau of Industry and Security Export Control Officer present in-country.”

The plan acknowledges that U.S. chip export controls will be more effective if they're aligned with foreign suppliers of the same technology, and it said “we should encourage partners and allies to follow U.S. controls, and not backfill.” But if they do, the U.S. should use the Foreign Direct Product Rule, which places export license restrictions on certain foreign-made items that are made with U.S.-origin software or technology, or even “secondary tariffs” to “achieve greater international alignment.”

The plan specifically recommends that Commerce and the State Department work with other agencies to better “share information on complementary technology protection measures” with allies. This should either build on existing efforts underway within those agencies or “involve new diplomatic campaigns.”

U.S. agencies also should create a plan that will incentivize “key” allies to adopt similar controls on advanced AI technologies, the plan said, although it didn’t say what those incentives could be. “This plan should aim to ensure that American allies do not supply adversaries with technologies on which the U.S. is seeking to impose export controls.”

America should also look for new ways to promote “plurilateral controls” for the AI tech stack, “avoiding the sole reliance on multilateral treaty bodies to accomplish this objective, while also encompassing existing U.S. controls and all future controls to level the playing field between U.S. and allied controls.” Allies should be convinced to adopt U.S. controls, work with the U.S. to develop new ones, and should block American adversaries “from supplying their defense-industrial base or acquiring controlling stakes in defense suppliers.”

The plan also calls on U.S. agencies to promote certain AI technology exports to meet global demand and make sure allies aren’t turning to chips supplied by U.S. adversaries. It said Commerce should develop a new program “aimed at gathering proposals from industry consortia for full-stack AI export packages.” Commerce would then work with the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, the Export-Import Bank, the State Department and others to “facilitate deals that meet U.S.-approved security requirements and standards,” it said.

The U.S. “must meet global demand for AI by exporting its full AI technology stack -- hardware, models, software, applications, and standards -- to all countries willing to join America’s AI alliance,” the plan said. “A failure to meet this demand would be an unforced error, causing these countries to turn to our rivals. The distribution and diffusion of American technology will stop our strategic rivals from making our allies dependent on foreign adversary technology.”

The plan also calls for stronger controls over biosecurity technologies along with harmful pathogens and “other biomolecules.”

All research institutions working on these issues and that receive federal funding should be required to use nucleic acid synthesis tools and synthesis providers that have ”robust nucleic acid sequence screening and customer verification procedures,” it said, and this should be based on more than just “voluntary attestation.” Government and industry should also work together to share data between nucleic acid synthesis providers to “screen for potentially fraudulent or malicious customers.”