Congress wants veto power over Trump administration for AI chip exports — new proposed AI Overwatch Act would shift ultimate control of high-performance chip exports
Legislators from the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee this week advanced the AI Overwatch Act, originally introduced in December, which would give ultimate control over the exports of high-performance data center-grade AI processors to adversary nations to Congress. As reported by Reuters, the bill advanced after the White House introduced its new export rules for fairly advanced AI GPUs from AMD and Nvidia to China, along with a mechanism to get a 25% fee from the exporters.
The AI Overwatch Act belongs to the same legislative family as the SAFE Chips Act introduced in early December, designed to curb shipments of advanced AI processors to adversary nations, such as China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, but it does so in a different way. The new bill codifies existing performance limitations that allow AMD and Nvidia to ship their H20 and MI308 processors to entities in adversary nations that are not specifically blacklisted by the U.S. government without an export license from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security. However, everything that offers higher performance would not only be subjected to export controls by the DoC but would also require approvals from Congress, which would have veto power, under the new proposals.
Essentially, if the bill becomes the law, then the U.S. Congress will be able to ban sales of AMD's Instinct MI325X and Nvidia's H200 processors to any Chinese customer, even if the executive branch explicitly allowed them. In addition, if passed, the legislation will terminate existing licenses, impose a temporary blanket denial until a new national security strategy is submitted, and subject any future approvals to 30-day congressional review.
One interesting thing that the bill introduces is that under the AI Overwatch Act, a trusted U.S. person may deploy and operate advanced, otherwise restricted AI GPUs abroad without certain export licenses, provided the hardware remains under U.S. ownership and control, is not placed in a country of concern, and meets strict security, ownership, and audit requirements. In effect, the framework allows the U.S. to export AI capability as a service to allies and partners while keeping physical control of the most powerful processors in American ownership.
For now, AMD, Nvidia, and others can sell high-end AI accelerators and servers to all countries except countries of concern without any restrictions. That is set to continue with the AI Overwatch. However, the trusted U.S. person framework is meant to governs ongoing control of AI compute beyond a one-time legal sale. If the bill becomes the law, it will ensure that even when allies access top-tier AI capability, ownership, oversight, and strategic leverage remain permanently with the United States.
"Companies like Nvidia are requesting to sell millions of advanced AI chips, which are the cutting edge of warfare, to Chinese military companies like Alibaba and Tencent," said Brian Mast, the chair the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee These are the same companies that work to spy against the United States of America, companies that the Chinese Communist Party uses to try and defeat the United States. This bill is very simple. It keeps America's advanced AI chips out of the hands of Chinese commie spies."
Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
