Chairman John Moolenaar of the House Select Committee on China has proposed a new framework to regulate U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) chip exports to China. In a letter sent this week to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Moolenaar urged the adoption of a rolling technical threshold (RTT) approach that would allow China access only to chips that are slightly better than what it can produce domestically at scale. The proposal also seeks to cap China’s total AI computing power at 10% of the United States’ capacity.
The RTT strategy follows Moolenaar’s opposition last month to renewed sales of Nvidia’s H20-equivalent chips in China. These chips currently surpass anything Chinese companies can mass-produce and, according to an April 2025 report from the Select Committee, have played a key role in developing China’s R1 reasoning model.
“We have repeatedly seen the Chinese Communist Party proliferate its technology and weapons to enable Russia, Iran, and proxy groups to attack American partners and allies. Iran, in particular, will be eager to take advantage of PRC-enabled AI capabilities,” Moolenaar wrote in his letter. “A version of R1 that DeepSeek has fine-tuned for the PLA using American chips is now a feasible option on the menu of Chinese military capabilities for sale. For example, AI-enabled drone swarms sold to Iran with sophisticated autonomous navigation, cooperative networking, electronic warfare capabilities, and target discrimination could threaten American or Israeli units in the region in ways that current systems may struggle to counter.”
Moolenaar’s proposal aims both to keep China reliant on U.S.-made hardware and software while restricting its ability to develop advanced AI systems independently.
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