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The United States has imposed broad export controls on chips used in artificial intelligence, aimed at making it difficult for China and other adversaries to access advanced technologies for military use.
The Biden administration on Monday announced an export control regime that would give 20 close allies and partners unrestricted access to AI-related chips while imposing licensing requirements on most other countries. The move immediately faced pushback from the U.S. semiconductor industry.
The policy aims to make it harder for China to use other countries to circumvent existing U.S. regulations and obtain technology that can be used for everything from modeling nuclear weapons to hypersonic missiles.
“This rule provides greater clarity for our international partners and industry to protect against concerns brought by malicious parties seeking to exploit advanced American technology against countries and our nation. “This counters the significant circumvention and associated national security risks associated with this,” said the US National Security Adviser. Jake Sullivan.
The scheme creates a three-tier licensing system for chips used to power data centers that process AI computations. No restrictions will be imposed on the upper tier, which includes countries such as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Ireland, as well as G7 members.
The third tier includes countries such as China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea, which the US group cannot effectively export to. More than 100 mid-sized countries will be subject to caps and permits on the amount they can export in excess of their limits.
A person familiar with the plans said sales of Nvidia’s H20 series of chips for China — a weakened version of the company’s most advanced chips modified to meet U.S. export restrictions for Chinese customers — will begin in 2020. He said that he would not be affected by any regulations.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the policy ensures new regulations do not “stifle innovation and U.S. technological leadership.” However, this provoked fierce opposition from the US semiconductor industry.
The Semiconductor Industry Association and the Information Technology Innovation Foundation issued a strong statement last week saying the policy would only give foreign competitors an advantage over U.S. companies.
Industry officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, denounced the move as an attempt by the U.S. government to micromanage the global chip supply chain to the detriment of its allies and its own companies, including Nvidia, AMD, Dell and Supermicro. He called it an unprecedented measure that shows that
“While cloaked in the name of ‘anti-China’ measures, these rules do nothing to strengthen U.S. security. It will give us control over technology around the world, including technology already widely used in software,” Nvidia said in a blog post.
“Biden’s new rules will only weaken America’s global competitiveness and undermine the innovation that has kept America ahead.”
But Jimmy Goodrich, a senior adviser at the Rand Corp., said the rule was an “important framework” that would strengthen national security and would not give Chinese AI companies a competitive advantage over U.S. groups. He said no.
“The unchecked offshoring of large AI data centers to countries with questionable ties to foreign adversaries poses clear national and economic security risks,” Goodrich said. “This framework has allowed millions of chips to remain in circulation around the world, and concerns about Chinese competition in AI chips are currently overblown.”
Industry insiders questioned whether the U.S. was equipped to oversee such a wide range of company-specific programs and expressed hope that the Trump administration would roll back the regulations. One U.S. official declined to comment on what the Trump administration would do, but stressed that “time is really of the essence.”
“We’re at a critical point right now, especially in our relationship with China. If you think about where our model is now compared to the model of the People’s Republic of China, we’re currently at a six-month The forecast is 18 months from now, so every minute counts,” the official said.
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A person familiar with the new administration said the new administration is “nothing if it doesn’t put America first,” referring to a slogan frequently used by Donald Trump. “The question is whether the new government will be able to maintain this or will it fall victim to its oil dictatorship-first policy.”
Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas and incoming chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said last week that the rule would “destroy America’s semiconductor leadership.” He said he was prepared to invoke the Congressional Review Act, which can be used to overturn federal agency actions.
Cruz said they were “secretly drafted without input from Congress or corporate America.” But Raimondo said the administration “has painstakingly consulted with experts in industry, civil society, and on Capitol Hill.”
