Trump administration recommends location verification for AI chips

SAN FRANCISCO: U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday recommended implementing export controls that would verify the location of advanced artificial intelligence chips, a move that was applauded by U.S. lawmakers from both parties in both houses of Congress.

AI Brief

The US aims to expand AI hardware and software exports to allies and speed up data center construction.
Location tracking of advanced AI chips is proposed to prevent access by adversaries like China.
Lawmakers back the plan, aligning it with proposed legislation to secure post-sale chip usage and exports.

The recommendation was part of a broader AI blueprint released on Wednesday that aimed to boost exports of AI hardware and software to U.S. allies and relax U.S. environmental rules to speed the construction of new AI data centers.

But the plan released Wednesday also said the U.S. should continue denying access to advanced U.S. AI chips made by companies like Nvidia and AMD to foreign adversaries. It added the U.S. government should "explore leveraging new and existing location verification features on advanced AI compute to ensure that the chips are not in countries of concern."

The recommendation drew support from two lawmakers who previously introduced bills that would require location verification of chips after sale over concerns that they are finding their way to countries such as China, where their export is banned.

Key details - such as how the technology would be implemented and how much cost it would add - remain to be worked out, both in the proposed bills and the Trump administration's recommendations.

"I was encouraged to see that the recommended export control policy includes location verification mechanisms and aligns closely with our bipartisan Chip Security Act. I look forward to learning more of the technical details and next steps for end-use verification," Representative Bill Foster, an Illinois Democrat who helped introduce a chip-location bill in May, told Reuters.

"Senator Cotton was pleased to see verification included in President Trump’s AI Action Plan, as it’s a vital part of his bipartisan, bicameral Chip Security Act and an important tool to keep advanced American technology out of the hands of Communist China," said Patrick McCann, a spokesperson for Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican who introduced a similar bill in the U.S. Senate.