South and Central Asia Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga Delivers Opening Remarks at Hearing on Strengthening Export Control Enforcement

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Foreign Affairs South and Central Asia Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga delivered opening remarks at a subcommittee hearing titled "Strengthening Export Control Enforcement".

Image

Beijing's AI giants like DeepSeek and Moonshot AI are stealing the intellectual property of America's leading AI labs through a method called distillation. The theft of our AI models is so brazen that when one Chinese model was asked to identify itself after being released this month, it called itself Claude, the name of one of America's leading AI models. China is also smuggling the technology it needs to make AI chips. In 2024, Huawei smuggled components from TSMC to make the equivalent of 1.5 million of its most advanced AI chips. The only reason the US government even learned of the smuggling is because a tech blog discovered it and notified BIS. Huawei's stockpile of smuggled AI chips from TSMC is still paying dividends for China more than a year later. Based on public reporting, it's unclear whether Huawei has produced any AI chips without that smuggled stockpile. We are still waiting to see what TSMC's penalty will be for the worst violation of export controls in American history.

The evidence is clear: without U.S. and allied technology, the CCP would lose the AI arms race. So, Beijing resorts to stealing. But to date, the United States has struggled to fully stop the CCP's AI theft. That brings us to today's hearing. Assistant Secretary Peters is tasked with cracking down on violators of our export control laws. Thankfully, BIS export enforcement is doing what it can to enforce our rules. On the first day of the administration, President Trump, in the America First Trade Policy memorandum instructed his team to strengthen enforcement on our export controls. The administration requested, and the House supported, a 77% increase to the BIS’ budget, with most of that going to export enforcement. However, the Senate only agreed to a 23% increase. That is a good start, but it's not where we should be.

America's adversaries are working around the clock to circumvent our export controls, and the status quo will not meet the urgency of this moment is my fear. I look forward to partnering with BIS on this mission, as Congress also plays a major role in this story as well. Yesterday's news of DeepSeek using smuggled chips is only one of many. Every few months, we learn of multi-million or even billion dollar AI chip black markets in China. Last year, the Financial Times reported that over a billion dollars of Nvidia chips have been smuggled into China in just three months.

Don’t take it from me. In the recent confirmation hearing for the next leader of Cybercom and the NSA, Lieutenant General Joshua Rudd stated, quote, “China is aggressively seeking to acquire advanced AI chips to accelerate its development of AI-enhanced weapons.”

I introduced the Chip Security Act to help meet this challenge. The Chip Security Act ensures that AI chips are not smuggled to China by scaling up best security practices, encouraging innovative technologies, and directly supporting the Trump administration's AI Action Plan recommendations. With this bill, we can be confident that DeepSeek can never again use the black market to get the AI chips it needs.

This committee is ready to help the Trump administration win the AI Arms Race against the Chinese Communist Party. We cannot fail in this enforcement mission. Every case that BIS brings against these smugglers is one step closer to ensuring that the free world, and not the Chinese Communist Party, wins the defining technologies of our time.
 

###