Republican lawmakers are pushing to place limits on the ability of U.S. companies to sell advanced semiconductors to China — an effort that has run afoul of some key figures in the Trump administration.
The effort also pits China hawks on the Hill against Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has repeatedly made the pitch to lawmakers and government official that the more U.S. chips are used in China, the more U.S. companies will be a leader in the space.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., is at the forefront of ensuring artificial intelligence and chips are being viewed as a national security asset — and he isn’t afraid to call Huang out directly.
“The joke here is, Jensen wants us to trust the CCP,” Mast told CNBC in an interview, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. “Anybody watching this should laugh.”
In the latest salvo, the House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced legislation that would allow Congress 30 days to review and block sales of advanced chips to adversarial countries — similar to the power Congress has with arms and weapons sales. It would also cancel all existing export licenses to countries like China until the government submits a detailed strategy about how the chips would impact military and intelligence.
All but two members of the committee voted to advance the measure. There is already a companion bill in the Senate with bipartisan backing from Sens. Jim Banks, R-Ind., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
“We are in an AI arms race, and it’s important that we know where the AI arms dealers are selling,” Mast said in the interview. He said while Congress has no right to interfere with chips being sold for video games and other commercial purposes, “when it blends into the world of now, it’s real war, real weapon systems, real casualties at the highest level of all militaries, yeah, we’re going to have a say.”
Mast added that Huang “might not like it, but that’s what’s going to take place.”
Nvidia said in a statement to CNBC the likelihood of China’s military using American chips was low as “it makes no sense for the Chinese military to depend on American technology.”
The company added that the “administration’s critics are unintentionally promoting the interests of foreign competitors — America should always want its industry to compete for vetted and approved commercial businesses, and thereby protecting national security, creating American jobs, and keeping America’s lead in AI.”
Mast, a supporter of Trump’s, said the committee was in sync with the White House, and the bill codified provisions in a recent Commerce Department regulation that permitted the sale of advanced chips to China. Both the bill and regulation ban advanced chips from being licensed in a way that could benefit the Chinese military, although the Commerce Department doesn’t give lawmakers the power to block a sale.
Despite strong support, the bill faces an uphill climb to get to the floor. Ahead of the vote in committee, David Sacks, the White House’s AI czar, retweeted a post from the X account Wall Street Mav that slammed the bill, saying it “handicaps Trump’s ability to strategically position the USA favorably against China.”
Sacks quoted the tweet, adding “Correct.”
Mast pushed back, saying that the talking points of the accounts Sacks boosted matched the talking points he’d heard from Nvidia.
“What he was promoting was literally mercenary influencers, about a dozen of them, telling literal lies,” Mast said.
Mast said he worked with others in the administration on the bill prior to the vote in committee.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The committee isn’t done with its oversight of chips. Mast is also planning a vote on a bill requiring exported advanced chips contain a mechanism to verify their location — and would require exporters to flag the government if a chip wound up in an unauthorized location. The bill, known as the Chip Security Act, has bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate
