The US Bureau of Industry and Security has released new guidance on the "revised" AI Diffusion Rule, which will focus on China's AI capabilities.
Trump-Era AI Diffusion Rule Will Target Huawei's Ascend Chips, Limiting Their Influence In China Only
There's no doubt that under the influence of US export controls, China has managed to upgrade its AI capabilities massively, and a prime example of this is DeepSeek's achievements along with Huawei's strides in the hardware department. While the US has managed to restrict the flow of cutting-edge chips into the nation, this has made China a lot more capable, and to counter this, the AI Diffusion rule will likely come after the nation's AI assets. Under the new press release issued by the BIS, it seems like the focus will be on thwarting the influence of Chinese AI chips and models.
The Trump Administration will pursue a bold, inclusive strategy to American AI technology with trusted foreign countries around the world, while keeping the technology out of the hands of our adversaries. At the same time, we reject the Biden Administration’s attempt to impose its own ill-conceived and counterproductive AI policies on the American people.
- US Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Jeffery Kessler
The report claims that the AI Diffusion rule will focus on three targets, the first of which is to restrict Huawei's Ascend chips. This is probably the first time we have seen mention of the AI chips in official documents, and this shows how far Huawei has come with its Ascend AI lineup. It is revealed that the use of Ascend accelerators anywhere in the world will be considered a violation of US export control, which shows that the Trump administration doesn't want these chips to end up anywhere apart from China, limiting their scope of influence.
Secondly, the use of US AI chips, particularly from NVIDIA, to train Chinese AI models will now be much more scrutinized. This could be done by integrating "tracking features" into NVIDIA chips to see where they end up. This is very much a possibility now, given that a bill to implement this is now with the US Senate, so it won't be long before we see AI chips coming with location tracking features or even a kill switch.
The revised AI Diffusion rule certainly won't be as harsh as during the Biden era. It seems like a key focus here is to prevent Huawei's expansion to offshore markets, which could prove to be a massive threat to NVIDIA.
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