WASHINGTON, D.C. – While much of official Washington seems parallelized by the results of the midterm election earlier this month, U.S. Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) is forging ahead with critically important business on Capitol Hill.
In a bipartisan effort with Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), Curtis is urging the Trump administration to close loopholes in export controls for advanced artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors.
In a Nov. 13 letter to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, the senators outlined how closing those regulatory gaps will maintain America’s competitive edge over Chinese technologies while promoting responsible domestic AI policy.
That letter was sparked by news reports that former CEO Jensen Huang of a mayor U.S. chip maker (NVIDIA) was involved in an intimate relationship with a Chinese spy. Despite that incident, Lutnick has reportedly delayed implementation of AI chip export restrictions proposed by President Donald Trump.
“We are deeply concerned by reports that the recently departed CEO of the nation’s top semiconductor company, NVIDIA, was caught in a honeypot scheme with a Chinese spy and executive at Megaspeed, a Singaporean firm known to help Chinese companies circumvent export controls,” the senators wrote.
“Our concerns about insufficient export controls on these technologies are magnified by numerous rogue artificial intelligence incidents, including autonomous hacking incidents, unauthorized agent access to the internet and attacks on real-world targets,” they added.
The senators’ concerns are heightened by recent testimony of whistleblowers from the nation’s leading AI companies who have warned that technology is accelerating without sufficient guardrails.
Senate staffers have also compiled information indicating that China’s frontier artificial intelligence capabilities are rapidly approaching those of the United States, with some experts estimating China’s cutting edge technologies are just six to nine months behind those of the United States.
Gaining a competitive advantage is a significant motivating factor behind that nation’s development of artificial intelligence. China also seeks to leverage the technology to enhance its national security, including by bolstering military capabilities, surveilling adversaries and tightening its control over information.
This is well documented by recent report Detecting and Countering Misuse of AI from analysts at Anthropic, an American artificial intelligence corporation based in San Francisco, best known for developing computer languages.
In that report, industry threat intelligence teams detailed incidents in which China-based entities and Chinese government affiliates used artificial intelligence for cyber operations, surveillance, scams and fraud as well as augmenting conventional weapons.
If China develops superior artificial intelligence capabilities, they warn, it will only increase the threat to the United States and its interests around the globe.
In their respective roles as members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Banking committees, Curtis and Rochester are urging Lutnick to condition licenses for the export of advanced chips on agreement that the recipients will not provide Chinese companies with access to those items.
“During your confirmation hearing,” they reminded the commerce secretary, “you called for stronger export controls.
“Today, the stakes are clear and our adversaries are not playing by our rules. We must close these loopholes if the United States is to maintain its competitive edge in artificial intelligence.”