The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced two bipartisan bills on April 23 that would give Congress direct oversight authority over US AI chip exports to China and other adversaries, in a direct challenge to the Trump administration’s handling of advanced semiconductor sales.
Summary
- The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced two bipartisan bills on April 23 targeting AI chip exports to China, including the AI Overwatch Act and the Chip Security Act.
- The AI Overwatch Act would give Congress 30 days to review and potentially block export licenses for advanced chips to adversarial countries, similar to existing arms sale review authority.
- The bills face resistance from both the White House AI czar David Sacks and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who argue restricting chip exports to China would harm US companies more than China.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced two bipartisan AI chip export bills on April 23, reflecting deepening congressional unease with the Trump administration’s approach to selling advanced Nvidia chips to China. The committee voted with all but two members in favor of the AI Overwatch Act, while also advancing the Chip Security Act, which targets hardware verification and diversion tracking.
AI Chip Export Bills Target Loopholes Congress Says the White House Has Left Open
The AI Overwatch Act, introduced by Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Brian Mast, would give the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Banking Committee a 30-day window to review and block export licenses for advanced AI chips issued to China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela, mirroring the review authority Congress already holds over arms sales. The bill would also cancel all existing export licenses to countries of concern until the administration submits a detailed strategy explaining how those chips would not impact military or intelligence capabilities. “We are in an AI arms race, and it’s important that we know where the AI arms dealers are selling,” Mast said. A companion bill in the Senate already carries bipartisan support from Senators Jim Banks and Elizabeth Warren. As crypto.news reported, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had warned the prior week that China possesses ghost datacenters with sufficient infrastructure to match US frontier AI, a statement that has complicated Nvidia’s simultaneous lobbying against the export restriction bills.
The Chip Security Act Addresses Hardware Diversion
The second bill advanced by the committee, the Chip Security Act, takes a hardware-level approach to the same problem. It would require that exported advanced chips contain a technical mechanism capable of verifying the chip’s physical location, and would obligate exporters to notify the government if a chip turns up at an unauthorized location. Both provisions are designed to close what lawmakers describe as a fundamental verification gap in current export rules: the US can approve a chip sale to an approved buyer in a permissible country, but has no reliable mechanism to confirm the chip has not been subsequently diverted to a Chinese military or intelligence facility. As crypto.news documented, Nvidia disclosed $5.5 billion in expected charges in April 2025 when the government required export licenses for H20 chips sold to China, demonstrating how directly semiconductor export policy translates into market impact for AI-adjacent assets.
White House and Nvidia Push Back, but Congress Is Not Backing Down
The bills face serious resistance before they can reach a floor vote. White House AI czar David Sacks publicly opposed the AI Overwatch Act on X, reposting commentary arguing the bill handicaps Trump’s ability to strategically position the US favorably against China. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has personally lobbied lawmakers, arguing that the more US chips are used in China, the more US companies will dominate the global AI market. Mast pushed back directly, saying the talking points he heard from Sacks matched those Nvidia had been circulating. As crypto.news tracked, markets have already shown sensitivity to US-China chip export policy, with Nvidia shares dropping sharply each time restrictions tighten. If the bills advance through the full House and Senate, they would represent a significant transfer of export control authority from the executive branch to Congress.
Both bills still need to clear the full House, pass the Senate, and be signed by the president before becoming law, a path that faces considerable resistance from the White House despite strong bipartisan committee support.
