US House panel advances bill to give Congress authority over AI chip exports

By Karen Freifeld NEW YORK, Jan 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday overwhelmingly advanced a bill that would give Congress power over artificial intelligence chip exports, despite pushback from White House AI czar David Sacks and a social media campaign against the legislation. Representative Brian Mast of Florida, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced the "AI Overwatch Act" in December after President Donald Trump greenlighted shipments of Nvidia's powerful H200 AI chips to China. The legislation, which still needs to clear the full House and Senate, would give the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Banking Committee 30 days to review and potentially block licenses issued to export advanced AI chips to China and other adversaries.  The latest version, which garnered the support of Democratic Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the committee's ranking member, also bans Nvidia's top-end Blackwell chips, an aide said. Forty-two members of the committee on Wednesday voted in favor of advancing the bill, two voted against, and one responded present. One source said the act's odds of passage increased after a coordinated media campaign last week against the bill.  "These advanced chips need to fall under the same oversight as any other military-related system," Mast said at a session on Wednesday before the committee vote. "This is about the future of military warfare."  A spokesperson for Sacks and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. Last week, Sacks reposted a post from an X account called “Wall Street Mav” that claimed the bill was being orchestrated by Never Trumpers and former staffers to Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden to undermine Trump's authority and his America First strategy. The post singled out the CEO of AI firm Anthropic, Dario Amodei, claiming he hired former Biden staffers to push the issue. “Correct,” Sacks wrote. An Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment on the claims and the bill. But Amodei has been outspoken about preventing China from getting advanced chips like the H200. “It would be a big mistake to ship these chips,” Amodei said on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I think this is crazy. It’s a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea." Conservative activist Laura Loomer, among others, also tweeted criticism of the bill last week, calling it "pro-China sabotage disguised as oversight."  Before the vote, Mast and other committee members rejected the online attacks. "There are special interest groups out there right now with millions of dollars funded by the very people who will profit off the sale of these chips and others that … are waging a social media campaign war…against this bill," said Republican Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, adding that the bill was to protect U.S. national security. "Shame on them." Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did the U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees export controls. (Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Jamie Freed and Alistair Bell)

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