On May 14, local time on May 13, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce issued an announcement that it would start to withdraw the Biden administration's "Intelligence Diffusion Rule" and announced additional measures to strengthen global semiconductor export controls.
On January 13 this year, the Biden administration of the United States formulated a new "AI Diffusion Rule" in the final stage of its term, dividing countries and regions around the world into three different levels, each corresponding to different AI chip export control rules, to further restrict the diffusion and transfer of AI chips.
Among them, the first level includes: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, France, French Guiana, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, China and the United Kingdom. These countries and regions can purchase advanced AI chips from the United States without restrictions.
The second level includes: more than 140 countries/regions including Singapore, Mexico, India, Malaysia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Portugal, Turkey, etc. These regions will face limits on the computing power they can procure: the total amount of processing performance (TPP) available to each country between 2025 and 2027 must not exceed 790 million. This is roughly equivalent to the upper limit of 50,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs.
The third tier includes about 22 countries and regions, including Belarus, mainland China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Iran, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Syria, etc. These countries and regions will be almost completely banned from importing advanced AI processors from the United States.
The rule was officially announced to the public on January 15, and its compliance requirements were originally scheduled to take effect on May 15, 2025.
However, the Trump administration believes that these new requirements set by the Biden administration will stifle American innovation and impose heavy new regulatory requirements on companies. At the same time, the "AI Proliferation Rule" will also damage the United States' diplomatic relations with dozens of countries, reducing these countries to the second tier.
Therefore, the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security plans to publish a formal revocation notice in the Federal Register and will publish a replacement rule in the future.
Jeffery Kessler, Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, directed BIS enforcement officials not to enforce the Biden administration's AI proliferation rules, noting: "The Trump administration will work with trusted countries around the world to pursue a bold and inclusive strategy for U.S. AI technology while ensuring that it does not fall into the hands of our adversaries. At the same time, we oppose the Biden administration's imposition of its own misguided and counterproductive AI policies on the American people."
In addition, the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security announced today measures to strengthen export controls on overseas AI chips, including:
Issued guidance stating that the use of Huawei Ascend chips anywhere in the world violates U.S. export controls.
(This move by the United States is really extremely speechless. It's fine if American companies are not allowed to use it, but other countries and regions are not allowed to use Huawei AI chips!)
Issued guidance to warn the public of the potential consequences of allowing American AI chips to be used to train and interfere with Chinese AI models.
(It is currently completely compliant to use US chips to train Chinese AI models overseas, which is why some domestic technology companies have built data centers overseas in recent years. If the new US restrictions restrict this, it will be detrimental to the development of Chinese AI models.)
Issued guidance to US companies on how to protect the supply chain from the impact of diversion strategies.
The BIS announcement stated that today's actions ensure that the United States will continue to be at the forefront of AI innovation and maintain its global dominance in AI.