Senators Call for Keeping Certain Parts of AI Diffusion Rule
Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., a member of the committee, urged the Trump administration July 31 to reinstate provisions of the recently rescinded AI diffusion export control rule that are designed to discourage U.S. companies from offshoring critical AI infrastructure and ensure that the technology that is exported is not misused.
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In a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the senators that while the Biden-era rule was “rightfully criticized for being overly complicated and burdensome,” the Trump administration should issue a replacement that “keeps the center of gravity for AI infrastructure” in the U.S.
“Specifically, we request that the upcoming rule maintains provisions that incentivize companies to keep a majority of their computing infrastructure used to train frontier models in the United States and imposes robust security guardrails on overseas data centers,” the senators wrote. “These requirements serve as an important backstop against outsourcing our core advantage in AI overseas.”
The senators said companies are "eager" to move much of their AI infrastructure outside of the U.S. amid offers of "generous subsidies and preferential treatment." If such outsourcing were left unchecked, the U.S. could imperil its own security, "ceding the development of advanced AI for military applications to countries that are not aligned with American values and interests."
The Bureau of Industry and Security announced in May that it would repeal the diffusion rule and issue a replacement (see 2505070039 and 2505130018). Lutnick said July 23 that the Trump administration is still working on the replacement (see 2507270003).