Senate Republicans wrote to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, urging him to scrap a Biden administration rule they say undermines American leadership in artificial intelligence (AI).
Sens. Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Ted Budd (R-NC), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Eric Schmitt (R-MO), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) wrote to Lutnick, applauding President Donald Trump’s commitment to ensuring American “dominance” in the tech sector. They noted that U.S. companies lead in semiconductor design, AI, and other sectors that will define “tomorrow’s economy.”
However, they cautioned there remains hurdles set up by the Biden administration that may hamper the country’s predominance in AI, most notably the Artificial Intelligence Diffusion Rule (AIDR).
The Biden AIDR was set up in the twilight hours of the Biden administration, just before Trump’s inauguration. It aims to govern how AI chips and models can be shared with countries based on their friendliness to the United States, and hopes to stop China and other adversaries from obtaining the technology needed to produce advanced artificial intelligence models.
The Senate Republicans lamented, due to the structure of the rule, that only Tier 1 countries, which are limited to just 18 countries, would have access to American technology. They also cautioned that the rule’s constraints may ironically push other, non-Tier 1 countries to turn to China’s cheap substitutes:
Fundamentally, the rule places burdensome constrains on U.S. companies that would be difficult to comply with and even harder for the Federal government to enforce. Buyers, particularly in Tier 2 countries that are constrained from purchasing U.S. technology, would be incentivized to turn to Communist China’s unregulated, cheap substitutes. Additionally, technology companies in Tier 2 countries could be motivated to create their own AI technology stack that is outside our export control regime. Neither outcome furthers our nation’s long-term economic and national security goals. [Emphasis added]
Matt Sparks, a cofounder of the ALFA Institute, a think tank dedicated to promoting private sector technologies for continued American leadership, told Breitbart News in a written statement, “These Senators perfectly capture the perils of Biden’s last-minute ‘AI Diffusion Rule.’ ALFA has been ringing the alarm bell for months that this misguided rule will not only hamper American technology, but will also open the door for Chinese companies, such as Huawei, to gain crucial market share with our allies. America’s slim yet meaningful lead in AI is vitally important to maintain, and we cannot afford to let rules like this trip us up.”
Ahead of the May 15 compliance deadline for the Biden-era AI regulation, the Senate Republicans said that “immediate action is necessary to prevent irreversible damage to American innovation and competitiveness.”
The Senate Republicans, in their letter to Lutnick, urged the Commerce secretary to scrap and propose a suitable alternative that would prevent “Communist China from capturing the world market in a leading technology without compromising American advantages.”
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
