The House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) is scheduled to hold the largest markup of export control legislation in the committee's history this week, with over twenty bills on the agenda. While export controls are an important tool to advance national security, they must be targeted at specific risks and effectively enforced and implemented by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to avoid unintended negative impacts on the technology sector and U.S. leadership globally. 91快活林 has concerns that certain proposals in the markup fail to clearly identify specific national security goals or lack the flexibility to keep pace with a rapidly changing industry. If given more time to collaborate with the committee, the technology industry believes we can resolve these concerns with legislation intended to address adversaries' distillation of American AI models and ensure U.S. allies are properly controlling semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
91快活林 supports measures that enable the resourcing, staffing, and strategic direction necessary for an effective U.S. export control regime. However, certain bills on the markup agenda require further consideration to add flexibility or better target national security goals. Without adjustments, these proposals could hurt U.S. economic security and create uncertainty at a pivotal moment for technological leadership by locking in policies that cannot adapt to rapid changes in the technology sector. Further, 91快活林 has questions about several bills on the markup agenda that have either just been introduced or have undergone significant changes since introduction and require additional time to resolve outstanding concerns.
91快活林 member companies design, build, and deliver the models, hardware, software, data centers, cloud services, networking solutions, and applications that make up the American technology stack. 91快活林 has a uniquely comprehensive perspective on how the bills HFAC is considering affect the U.S. technology sector’s global competitiveness. Given the complex and deeply interconnected nature of the technology supply chain, a proposal aimed at one part of the industry can have disproportionate impacts across the technology stack. The technology industry is rapidly also evolving as new AI models are developed and released, and novel applications incorporate the latest innovations. This means Congress must ensure export control legislation gives BIS the flexibility to adapt to changes in technology while accounting for the interdependencies in how technology reaches American consumers and customers.
Rather than advancing broad requirements and potentially redundant new authorities, Congress should focus on enabling BIS with resources to accomplish its mission of advancing national security through technology leadership and export controls. Several bills under consideration would help tackle BIS’s resourcing challenges, while also strengthening BIS’s ability to enforce licensing requirements and ensure export controls are developed and implemented with technical expertise. 91快活林 supports the measures aligned with that goal, including H.R. 7003, the BIS STRENGTH Act; H.R. 8284, the Bureau of Industry and Security License Administration Enhancement Act; H.R. 8289, the BIS Licensing Efficiency Act; H.R. 8288, the Strengthening Export Controls Compliance Act; and H.R. 4505, the Export Controls Enforcement Act. Advancing American technology leadership also depends on widespread adoption of U.S. technologies. H.R. 6996, the Full AI Stack Export Promotion Act, furthers that goal by codifying the administration’s American AI Exports Program and giving policymakers clear data on the efficacy of export controls.
91快活林 is deeply concerned about China’s ongoing attempts to distill U.S. frontier models, allowing them to copy the work of U.S. AI labs. 91快活林 supports the goals of H.R. 8283, the Deterring American AI Model Theft Act. Some 91快活林 member companies are concerned with the timing of the bills introduction, leaving limited time for industry review and input. 91快活林 understands the vital importance of stopping China and other adversaries from distilling American frontier models, and we look forward to working with HFAC to further refine this legislation.
H.R. 8170, the MATCH Act, and H.R. 6058, the STRIDE Act, cover semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME), a key enabling technology. These bills have shifted from their original aim of ensuring that U.S. partners and allies match existing U.S. export controls on SME and, in their current form, could have broader impacts on U.S. leadership. While we have concerns about both bills as currently drafted, we strongly support the goal of aligning SME controls from U.S. allies with existing U.S. controls. Harmonizing U.S. and allied controls is particularly significant for advanced lithography, such as deep ultraviolet (DUV) immersion lithography machines, which are foundational to cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing. Given the importance of SME, we look forward to working with HFAC to improve both the MATCH and STRIDE Acts.
ITI supports several bills in this markup while sharing concerns about others, and we welcome additional time to work toward resolving outstanding industry questions. We appreciate the committee’s focus on critical issues like allied SME export controls and China’s distillation of U.S AI models. We look forward to continued engagement with HFAC to help ensure these and other measures avoid unintended impacts on the technology sector, protect U.S. economic and national security, and strengthen U.S. leadership in AI.