US export controls on AI chips
US rules, set from October 2022, that restrict sales of advanced AI processors and of the machines that make them to certain countries.
The processors that train large models have become an instrument of power, and the United States controls their export through performance thresholds, also targeting manufacturing equipment. For a data center operator or a compute provider, the risk is twofold: being unable to buy the planned hardware, or seeing purchased hardware become unsellable in a market. The rules change often, by administrative decision, and can apply within weeks to contracts already signed. It is pure political risk for digital infrastructure, which property policies do not cover and which only political risk contracts, rarely suited to the case, come close to.
The Bureau of Industry and Security published the first rules on October 7, 2022, then tightened them on October 17, 2023 to close access to scaled-down versions designed to get around the thresholds; an AI diffusion rule published on January 13, 2025 was abandoned in May 2025, before its compliance date.
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