Lawmakers Urged to Rethink Export Controls Amid China's Tech Advances
The U.S. government’s approach to export controls is flawed because it's based on outdated assumptions about China's technological prowess, a witness told the House Foreign Affairs Committee at a closed-door roundtable Feb. 12.
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The current approach assumes American technology is still advancing more quickly than China’s, so the U.S. will remain ahead of its rival, the witness said, according to a summary of the person's remarks. The approach also assumes the U.S. can accurately predict and slow China's innovations.
But the witness believes those assumptions are no longer correct. China has been advancing more quickly than the U.S. has for years, and it has been overcoming American restrictions in ways the U.S. did not anticipate. To reflect this new reality, the U.S. should rethink its approach to export controls, the witness recommended.
The summary of the witness' remarks was provided on condition of anonymity for the source. Several other witnesses at the roundtable didn't respond to requests for comment.
Although the committee's Republican majority did not release any information about the roundtable, the Democratic minority said on its website that the event was titled, "DeepSeek, Exports, and the AI Arms Race: Part 1." Many lawmakers have raised concerns about the advanced AI model recently developed by DeepSeek, a Chinese startup, and have called for increased export controls in response (see 2502120003, 2502030031 and 2501300067).