A high-stakes race is underway that will determine which country will supply the technology that powers the world’s emerging AI economy. Vice President Vance got it right at the recent AI Summit in Paris, emphasizing the need to focus on AI opportunities, pursue lighter regulations, and prioritize bringing American AI to the world. However, a last-minute Biden administration regulation, if left unchanged, risks undermining America’s ability to succeed.
The Biden administration’s interim final AI Diffusion Rule caps the export of essential American AI components to many fast-growing and strategically vital markets. As drafted, the rule undermines two Trump administration priorities: strengthening U.S. AI leadership and reducing the nation’s near trillion-dollar trade deficit. Left unchanged, the Biden rule will give China a strategic advantage in spreading over time its own AI technology, echoing its rapid ascent in 5G telecommunications a decade ago.
As a company, we support the need to protect national security by preventing adversaries from acquiring advanced AI technology. And there are important elements in the rule that should be retained. For example, the rule’s qualitative provisions would ensure that AI technology components are deployed in certified, secure, and trusted datacenters. This avoids shipments of advanced chips to entities that do not meet these standards and thereby helps reduce the risk of chip diversion to China. Similarly, the rule rightly imposes strict requirements on these trusted datacenter operators to protect against chip diversion and to ensure that advanced AI services cannot be used by adversaries.
There is an important opportunity to further strengthen these provisions, including by ensuring the Commerce Department has the resources it will need to put the Rule into effect. This can help both expedite approval processes for companies and strengthen enforcement, including against unlawful chip diversion.
But a significant problem remains. Namely, the Biden rule goes beyond what’s needed. It puts many important U.S. allies and partners in a Tier Two category and imposes quantitative limits on the ability of American tech companies to build and expand AI datacenters in their countries. This includes many American friends, such as Switzerland, Poland, Greece, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. These are countries where we and many other American companies have significant datacenter operations.
This Tier Two status is undermining one of the essential requirements needed for a business to succeed—namely, confidence by our customers that they will be able to buy from us the AI computing capacity that they will need in the future. Customers in Tier Two countries now worry that an insufficient supply of critical American AI technology will restrict their opportunities for economic growth.
The unintended consequence of this approach is to encourage Tier Two countries to look elsewhere for AI infrastructure and services. And it’s obvious where they will be forced to turn. If left unchanged, the Diffusion Rule will become a gift to China’s rapidly expanding AI sector.
All this comes at precisely the time when the American tech sector wants to invest in AI computing capacity at an unprecedented level. Our own company’s plans are illustrative. This year alone, Microsoft will spend $80 billion to build AI infrastructure around the world, with more than half of this total on U.S. soil. As this reflects, the solid majority of our computing power will remain in the United States.
But our ability to continue growing and investing at this level, including in the United States, depends in important part on exporting our technology services. This requires building AI infrastructure in other countries, so AI services can be accessed and used with low latency by local enterprises and consumers. Ironically, the Diffusion Rule discourages what should be regarded as an American economic opportunity—the export of world-leading chips and technology services.
The potentially negative impact on American economic growth doesn’t stop there. As the tech sector invests billions of dollars to build datacenters around the world, we are developing global supply chains that combine international and American suppliers of more traditional manufactured goods. I saw this first-hand when I was in Warsaw last week to announce with Prime Minister Donald Tusk a $700 million expansion of Microsoft’s datacenter infrastructure in Poland. Among the beneficiaries are American workers manufacturing advanced electrical generators in Lafayette, Indiana, so they can be shipped to Poland.
The irony could not be clearer. At the very moment when the Trump administration is pressing Europe to buy more American goods, the Biden Diffusion Rule leaves the leaders of partners like Poland asking why they have been relegated to Tier Two status and an uncertain ability to buy more American AI chips in the future.
This puts the opportunity for the Trump administration in bold relief. It can take an overly complex rule that requires 41 pages in the Federal Register and right-size it. Make it simpler. Stop relegating American friends and allies into a second tier that undermines their confidence in ongoing access to American products. Eliminate the quantitative caps that would interfere with a well-functioning economic market. And keep what matters most, such as the qualitative security standards and AI use restrictions that protect national security.
We need to recognize the obvious. America’s AI race with China begins at home. It’s founded on the ability of innovative American firms to bring manufactured goods and technology services to like-minded countries around the world. We’re prepared to invest. What we need now is an AI diffusion rule that gives us the ability to do so.
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