The United States Senate came together on July, 25 to back bipartisan legislation which mandates U.S. companies to report any investments in Chinese technologies.
In an overwhelming vote of 91 to 6, the Senate supported the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which is anticipated to be implemented as a law later in the year.
The amendment will require U.S. companies to notify federal agencies of outbound investments in Chinese technologies including semiconductors – used to create artificial intelligence (AI)- and AI itself.
Democratic Senator Bob Casey and Republican Senator John Cornyn penned the amendment, which is a version of the Outbound Investment Transparency Act that targets risks of U.S. foreign investments in countries like China.
Casey commented on his support of the amendment by saying:
“We need this type of outbound investment notification to understand just how much… critical technology we are transferring to our adversaries via these capital flows.”
He concluded by saying with such information the U.S. will be able to position itself to “take control” of its economic future.
This version of the bill is expected to pass through the Senate by the end of the week, then be reconciled with another bill passed in the House of Representatives earlier in the prior to be signed off by President Joe Biden.
Related: Report: China to tighten rules around releasing generative AI tools
These new measures come as the U.S. and China continue a tit for tat relationship surrounding emerging technologies.
On June 28, officials in the United States announced that they are considering restricting the amount of computing power in semiconductor chips to lessen the flow of AI chips available in the Chinese market.
A few days after that announcement, on July 3, the Chinese government announced its own plans to impose export controls on metals used to manufacture semiconductors.
The latest move came again from the U.S., who on July 5, is reportedly considering adding controls to the amount of access Chinese companies will have to U.S.-based cloud computing services (CCS). This would include products from CCS giants such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft.
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