South and Central Asia Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga Delivers Opening Remarks at Hearing on Export Control Loopholes
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Foreign Affairs South and Central Asia Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga delivered opening remarks at a subcommittee hearing titled "Export Control Loopholes: Chipmaking Tools and their Subcomponents".
Cutting edge AI chips like Nvidia and Blackwell are driving the AI revolution that may define the 21st century. Less advanced chips known as foundational chips power everything from phones, cars, and military drones shaping the battlefields of Ukraine, Middle East, and potentially the Taiwan Strait. Whichever country dominates semiconductor production will have the power to lead the world. Building these chips requires highly specialized tools. These chip making tools are often worth billions of dollars, can etch features in chips that are smaller than the width of a strand of human DNA, not hair, DNA. American, Dutch, and Japanese companies control the vast majority of the market share. If the free world blocked China’s access to these machines, American allies would control the defining technology of our time. President Trump and his administration understand this based on their public statements.
During his first administration, President Trump, blacklisted key Chinese semiconductor companies Huawei and Smic and convinced the Netherlands to block China's access to the most advanced chip making tool in the world, known as the EUV lithography machines. These machines are used to make advanced chips like the Nvidia and Blackwell which are power cutting ai tools, thankfully President Trump had the foresight to make this move three years before ChatGPT unleashed the AI revolution.
The Biden administration later expanded on President Trump's exports controls to cover other essential tools slowing Chinese chip capabilities. Unfortunately, many of the Biden administration's export controls constrained critical loopholes culminating in the administration's ineffective leadership abroad on this issue. Troubling the Biden admin gave a free pass to key allies who continued to provide the Chinese Communist party with chipmaking equipment to this day. Moreover, the United States and its allies continue to provide China with the essential components it needs to build its own tools. America must close these loopholes to stop the Chinese communist party from leveraging our technology for its military modernization efforts in the pursuit of technological dominance. I believe President Trump is committed to closing these loopholes. On the first day of his second term, President Trump directed the State and commerce to quote "identify and eliminate loopholes in existing export controls” The White House’s AI action plan, personally written by Mr. Ball here, goes further by recommending export controls on advanced subcomponents used to make chipmaking tools. In addition to stopping allies from supplying China's defense and industrial base and backfilling US technology.
The time to act is now. The Chinese Communist Party is exploiting the loopholes in US export controls to stockpile chipmaking tools and critical components while it still can. If left unchecked, the CCP would use its dominance to modernize its military and build the advanced chips needed to win the AI arms race. Acting quickly and decisively will ensure that China cannot lead the world to a dystopian future, when the surveillance state controls virtually all aspects of life. If China becomes the dominant global producer of both chipmaking equipment and semiconductors it will grant the CCP an even more dangerous stranglehold over the United States that it currently has with rare earth magnets today. Congress and the executive branch must quickly act, close the loopholes thereby ensuring the free world wins the defining the technology of our time, or it risks seeding the future to China. That decision will be critical and crucial to keep the world's most advanced chips out of China's hands and ensure that Silicon valley, not Shenzhen remains the center of the AI revolution.
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