A key House committee will vote on the AI Overwatch Act, legislation that would give Congress 30 days to review and potentially block licenses for exporting advanced AI chips to China and other adversaries. The bill was introduced by Representative Brian Mast after President Donald Trump authorized shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China.
The legislation has sparked debate among policymakers and industry figures. White House AI czar David Sacks and several conservative commentators criticized the bill, while Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei endorsed the export restrictions, likening shipments of advanced AI chips to providing nuclear weapons to North Korea. Representative Mast defended the proposal, highlighting prior actions to block sales of ASML’s most advanced chip-making tools and Nvidia Blackwell chips to China.
If approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the bill would still need to pass both the full House and Senate before being signed into law by the president.
