A bipartisan group of U. S. senators, including notable Republican China hawk Tom Cotton, has introduced a bill to prevent the Trump administration from easing restrictions on Beijing’s access to artificial intelligence chips for 2. 5 years. Unveiled on Thursday, the SAFE CHIPS Act was filed by Republican Senator Pete Ricketts and Democrat Chris Coons. The bill mandates that the Commerce Department, which manages export controls, must reject any license requests from buyers in China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea seeking U. S. AI chips more advanced than currently allowed for 30 months. Furthermore, after that period, the department is required to inform Congress of any proposed rule changes one month prior to implementation. “Denying Beijing access to [the best US] AI chips is essential to our national security, ” Ricketts said in a statement. Co-sponsored by Republican Dave McCormick and Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Andy Kim, the legislation marks a rare bipartisan attempt, including members of Trump’s party, to block further relaxation of tech export restrictions to China. In response to China’s new export limits on rare earth metals vital for global tech firms, Trump’s Commerce Department initially imposed—and later eased—restrictions on Nvidia’s H200 AI chips.

This rollback drew criticism from Republican Representative John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on China. As part of trade negotiations with China aimed at delaying its rare earth export controls, Trump postponed by a year a rule to restrict U. S. tech exports to blacklisted Chinese company units and pledged to repeal a Biden-era policy limiting AI chip exports worldwide, partly due to concerns over chip smuggling to China. The bill emerges amid discussions within the Trump administration about approving Nvidia’s H200 AI chip sales to China. Washington’s China hawks worry Beijing could leverage these advanced chips to enhance its military with AI-enabled weapons and bolster intelligence and surveillance capabilities.