Trump administration to change how US controls global access to AI chips, new rules coming

Trump administration working on changes to Biden-era rule that limited global access to AI chips, with a new global licensing rule for Ai chips considered.

Trump administration to change how US controls global access to AI chips, new rules coming
Comment IconFacebook IconX IconReddit Icon
Gaming Editor
Published
1 minutes & 30 seconds read time

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you.

TL;DR: The Trump administration is revising Biden-era semiconductor export rules to restrict global access to advanced AI chips by potentially eliminating the current tiered system. These changes aim to strengthen US trade leverage and tighten licensing thresholds, limiting AI chip distribution to select countries and enhancing national security controls.

The Trump administration is working on fresh changes to Biden-era rules that limits global access to AI chips, where we could see the US splitting the world into multiple tiers that would determine how many advanced semiconductors a country can receive.

Trump administration to change how US controls global access to AI chips, new rules coming 37
2

The news is coming from a new report pushed over at Reuters, with the usual "sources familiar with the matter" who also said that these plans are still under discussion, and that they could change. But, if they were enacted, removing these tiers would open up the US chips as an even more powerful bargaining tool for trade talks with other countries.

These new semiconductor export rules would better limit access to bleeding-edge AI chips, and will remove the Biden-era tiered system that currently seperates nations into tiers, with the 1st tear getting all of the chips they want, with 17 nations and Taiwan on that 1st tier list, 120 countries on the second tier, while third-tier nations including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are blocked from AI chips completely.

Wilbur Ross, who served as Commerce secretary during the first Trump administration, said in an interview on Tuesday: "There are some voices pushing for elimination of the tiers, I think it's still a work in progress".

Another possible change includes a lowered threshold for an exception to licensing, where under the current rule, orders at around the equivalent of 17,000 of NVIDIA's previous-gen Hopper H100 AI GPUs, do not count towards country caps, and only require that the government be notified of the order, with no license required.

The Trump administration is considering making the cutoff orders at the equivalent of 500 H100 AI GPUs, a far cry from the 17,000 or so now. Trump administration officials have been suggesting they wanted to make the rules "stronger but simpler" with some experts believing that removing the tiers would (somehow) make the rules more complicated.