US senators unveil bill to prevent easing of curbs on Nvidia chip sales to China

WASHINGTON: A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, including prominent Republican China hawk Tom Cotton, on Thursday unveiled a bill that would block the Trump administration from loosening rules that restrict Beijing's access to artificial intelligence chips from Nvidia and AMD for 2.5 years.

AI Brief

The bipartisan SAFE CHIPS Act would ban export licenses for advanced US AI chips to China, Russia, Iran and North Korea for 30 months.
The bill aims to prevent Beijing from using cutting-edge chips for military AI, amid Trumps moves to ease export restrictions.
Lawmakers stress national security as the US debates Nvidia chip sales to China and faces rare earth supply tensions.

The bill, known as the SAFE CHIPS Act, was filed by Republican Senator Pete Ricketts and Democrat Chris Coons. It would require the Commerce Department, which oversees export controls, to deny any license requests for buyers in China, Russia, Iran or North Korea to receive U.S. AI chips more advanced than the ones they currently are allowed to obtain for 30 months. After that, Commerce would have to brief Congress on any proposed rule changes a month before they take effect.

The legislation, which was co-sponsored by Republican Dave McCormick and Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Andy Kim, represents a rare effort led in part by Trump's own party to stop him from further relaxing tech export restrictions on China.

"Denying Beijing access to (the best American) AI chips is essential to our national security," Ricketts said in a statement.

The bill comes as the Trump administration mulls greenlighting sales of Nvidia's H200 artificial intelligence chips to China, Reuters reported. China hawks in Washington fear that Beijing could use the prized chips to supercharge its military with AI-powered weapons and more powerful intelligence and surveillance capabilities.

Faced with new Chinese export curbs on the rare earth metals that global tech companies rely on, Trump's Commerce Department imposed and then rolled back curbs on Nvidia's H20 AI chips, a move that was criticized by Republican Representative John Moolenaar, who chairs the House China Select Committee. Advanced Micro Devices, a Nvidia rival, is also eager to sell to China.

As part of negotiations with China to delay its own rare earth controls, Trump pushed back by a year a rule to restrict U.S. tech exports to units of already-blacklisted Chinese companies and has vowed to nix a Biden-era rule restricting AI chip exports globally to countries based in part on concerns around chip smuggling to China.

Greg Allen, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, called the bill a common-sense measure that should be passed urgently, noting that the United States cannot dissuade China from seeking to swiftly end its reliance on U.S. technology. “The only choice for America is whether or not we should sell China the technology to make their decoupling strategy fast and convenient," he said.