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Lennart Heim and Timothy Fist offer reaction to the newly announced BIS chip export controls.

Lennart Heim, Research Fellow, Centre for the Governance of AI:

By targeting chips based on computational performance (and its derived performance density) and removing interconnect bandwidth, these new rules appear to fix a loophole in last year’s export controls. The new rules also try to sensibly carve out an exception for consumer chips, meaning only advanced data center AI chips are captured by the export controls. The changes help the export controls meet their designated purpose.

Timothy Fist, Fellow, Technology & National Security, Center for a New American Security:

The updates to the Oct 7th, 2022 export controls aim to prevent workarounds to the previous regulations, as well as address the risk of smuggling. Expanded licensing requirements to additional countries will likely help prevent the smuggling of controlled items to China through these more indirect pathways. The updates also create a licensing requirement for the export of chips to the overseas subsidiaries/branches of Chinese firms. This addresses another potential smuggling pathway, and could also restrict Chinese cloud providers from acquiring controlled chips and making them available on the cloud to Chinese users.

Image: Fritzchens Fritz / Better Images of AI / GPU shot etched 5 / CC-BY 4.0