Export controls for AI
Government restrictions on the sale or transfer of AI hardware, software, and know-how across borders — used to slow rivals' access to the technology that trains frontier models.
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Export controls are trade law instruments that require a license — or prohibit outright — the transfer of specified goods, software, or technical data to foreign parties. Applied to AI, they target the chokepoints: advanced chips (GPUs, HBM memory), chip-making equipment, and model weights. The mechanism is a list: an item added to a control list can no longer ship to designated countries without government approval. The hard part is that the list-based approach lags the technology, enforcement depends on end-user verification across opaque supply chains, and allies who aren't aligned on the same controls provide an off-ramp.
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Export controls, turned inward
Washington used the export-control rules written for chips and weapons to bar every foreign national from two Anthropic models — so Anthropic shut them down for everyone on Earth.
Passports to the firm
Beijing now requires government sign-off before top engineers at DeepSeek, Alibaba and other private AI firms can travel abroad — a control built for nuclear scientists, pointed for the first time at people who train chatbots.
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