Chip Export Controls & Outbound Dual-Use

Glossary

AI diffusion framework: An ambitious control design that sorted countries into tiers and assigned compute access accordingly, granting trusted allies near-free access, denying adversaries, and managing a large middle group through licenses and numerical caps. Heavily revised after introduction, but its allocation logic proved influential.
Chokepoint power: Leverage gained by controlling a narrow but indispensable segment of a supply chain, such as chip design software or manufacturing equipment, and extending rules to everything that passes through it. It lets a country influence far more production than it directly makes.
Dual-use: An item that has both legitimate commercial applications and potential military or strategic ones. Because intent cannot be inspected, regulators control the object itself; an advanced accelerator is dual-use because it can serve civilian research or strategically significant model training.
Entity List: A published roster of specific organizations deemed to pose security or foreign-policy risks. Transactions with listed parties require licenses, often reviewed under a presumption of denial, effectively cutting the named organization off from controlled technology.
Export Administration Regulations: The body of U.S. federal rules, administered by the Bureau of Industry and Security within the Commerce Department, that governs the export of dual-use goods including advanced computing hardware. It classifies items, assigns reasons for control, and specifies which destinations require a license.
Extraterritorial reach: The principle that U.S. rules can follow U.S.-origin technology across borders, governing even foreign-to-foreign transactions when an item contains enough U.S.-origin content or was produced using controlled U.S. tools. It is the source of the system's global leverage.
High-bandwidth memory: Stacked memory that feeds data to an advanced accelerator fast enough to keep its processor busy. Because a powerful chip starves without it, this memory has itself become a control target, illustrating how restricting an essential complement can be as effective as restricting the core product.
License: Government permission to complete an otherwise-restricted export. Whether a license is required depends on the item, the end user, and the destination; for sensitive transactions it may be reviewed under a presumption of denial, meaning the default answer is no.