Sponsor
Joshua David Hawley
Senator · R-MO
Senator · R-MO
Official title: Amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit United States persons from advancing artificial intelligence capabilities within the People's Republic of China, and for other purposes.
Introduced January 29, 2025 by Joshua David Hawley · Last progress January 29, 2025
The bill strengthens U.S. national-security protections by restricting transfers, investment, and use of China-linked AI technologies and creates clearer enforcement tools, but it also raises substantial legal uncertainty, compliance costs, market disruption, and a real risk of chilling legitimate research and international collaboration.
Tech workers, researchers, and U.S. companies face lower risk that sensitive AI technology or IP will be exfiltrated or forced into PRC military-civil programs, reducing espionage and forced technology transfer.
U.S. investors and financial institutions are protected from exposure to Chinese AI firms tied to military-civil fusion or human-rights abuses by restricting holdings and financing, reducing capital flows that could support adversarial or abusive uses.
The bill clarifies and harmonizes legal definitions (AI components, export-control, IP) with existing statutes, giving companies and lawyers clearer standards for compliance, contracts, and cross-border deals.
Scientists, university researchers, and academic institutions risk criminal liability or immigration consequences for collaborations with PRC entities, which is likely to chill legitimate academic research, exchanges, and training.
Broad or vague statutory definitions (e.g., of covered AI components, 'interest', or criminalized conduct) create legal uncertainty and raise due-process and civil‑liberties concerns because enforcement could be uneven or overbroad.
Universities, labs, small businesses, and firms will incur higher compliance, legal, and administrative costs to screen partners, restructure projects, and avoid liability, which may slow R&D and increase operating costs.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Bars imports and outbound transfers of specified AI/GAI technologies with China, criminalizes certain PRC‑directed AI R&D, and forbids U.S. persons from investing in designated Chinese AI entities.
Prohibits trade, transfers, and certain investment ties between the United States and specified Chinese AI actors and technology. It bans importation of AI/GAI technologies from the People’s Republic of China, bars exports/reexports/in‑country transfers of those technologies to China, creates a new federal crime for conducting AI R&D on behalf of the PRC, and forbids U.S. persons from holding or lending to designated Chinese “entities of concern.” The bill imposes criminal and civil penalties, requires Commerce and the Attorney General to issue implementing regulations, and enables the President to use emergency IEEPA authority to enforce investment and financial prohibitions. Effective dates are phased: regulations due quickly, the trade ban starts 180 days after enactment, and the investment/ownership prohibitions begin one year after enactment.