Then there were the details. How would the policy distinguish between equipment that really was a risk and products that companies still have to be able to sell? Estevez says he remembers that the White House has insisted on limitations on a larger number of items, while the Commerce department, which is responsible for promoting economic growth, was looking for a more tailor -made approach. “Trying to stop China is the message of a fool,” Raimondo, the secretary of the trade, told the Wall Street Journal at the end of the Biden period and described the export controls as merely “speed bumps” for China.
Nevertheless, the administration continued to plow forward. Several former civil servants specifically mentioned Chhabra's bureaucratic skills and determination as a central to the chip strategy. “American technology is not allowed to build opponents AI possibilities that will be reversed against American troops, strategic assets and critical infrastructure,” says Chhabra, now from the government and leading national security policy at Anthropic. “Strong export controls are essential for American national security and AI Di down.”
It is not unusual for a group of scientists with a daring new vision for policy to join the government, but it is much less common for their ideas to be taken quickly. “Look, Tarun and I have always argued,” says Estevez, but “moving in the same direction was not the problem.” At least with this group of employees, the core conflict was no more than if they should try to limit China, but on how – bras restrictions versus targeted measures that retain more flexibility for industry.
Finding that balance was a moving target. After the first control round in October 2022, the BIDEN administration decided that it had to further sharpen the restrictions. Civil servants had already forbidden Nvidia to sell its best AI training ship to China, but the company then developed a new, China-specific chip with possibilities that pushed to the limit of the existing rules. In October 2023 and December 2024, the BIDEN administration sharpened the controls on both chips and chipping equipment to connect what was seen as unintended meshes.
To make this stick, the Biden administration, however, needed help from Japan and the Netherlands for the first time. Keeping advanced chips from the Chinese market was a relatively discreet task, aimed at just a few products. On the other hand, Chinese efforts to build advanced chips, on the other hand, was a multinational company. This is because the manufacture of semiconductor depends on precision machines and software from all over the world, with particularly crucial inputs from the Dutch company ASML and Japanese companies such as Tokyo Electron. If the United States were to ban its suppliers of equipment to sell to China, but Japan and the Netherlands continued to sell, American companies would lose income and China could still upgrade its domestic production.
The Biden administration had sought Japanese and Dutch cooperation from the start, but there was no quick agreement. So the White House decided to do it alone and announced the 2022 checks before the Allies signed up, knowing well that the move would harm American companies. Biden's administration then had to convince Tokyo and Amsterdam that participation in the effort was worth losing some exports and risk Chinese retribution. After decades at the Ministry of Defense, Estevez was well aware that AI represented the future of warfare, he says. Whether there was an AI bending point or not, he knew that military planners would still prefer a Chinese opponent who is left technologically. This idea also seemed to bear weight with allied officials. “The sales pitch to the Dutch and the Japanese was: artificial intelligence is the future,” says Estevez. “And they bought that.”
