Bottom Line Up Front
H.R. 6875, the AI OVERWATCH Act, would establish a process for Congress to oversee the exports of America’s sensitive, dual-use AI chips to adversaries like the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
| Bill Number |
H.R. 6875 |
| Bill Name |
AI OVERWATCH Act |
| Summary |
Establishes a process for Congress to oversee the exports of America’s sensitive, dual-use AI chips to adversaries like the People’s Republic of China. |
| Chamber |
House |
| Lead Sponsor |
Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) |
| Original Cosponsors |
Reps. John Moolenaar (R-MI), Bill Huizenga (R-MI), Keith Self (R-TX), Young Kim (R-CA), Rick Crawford (R-AR), Darin LaHood (R-IL) |
| Date Introduced |
12/18/2025 |
Click here to read the full legislative text and view the list of cosponsors.
Why It Matters
- America’s lead in advanced AI chips is critical to U.S. national security. As former Deputy National Security Advisor and FDD China Program Chair Matt Pottinger told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on January 14, “AI isn’t just a pivotal technology. It is the pivotal technology that will determine whether the United States and its allies, or an axis of totalitarian regimes, control the means to lead in virtually all technologies, military and commercial.”
- Loosening export controls could significantly erode U.S. AI leadership. According to Chris McGuire, a former U.S. official who worked on AI policy, the best U.S. AI chips are currently about five times more powerful than Huawei’s best offerings, and by 2027 that gap will widen to seventeen times. However, if the United States exports three million H200 chips to China in 2026, it would give China more AI computing power than it could produce domestically until 2028 or 2029 at the earliest. This would significantly advance China’s AI capabilities far beyond its own domestic manufacturing capacity.
- Chinese tech founders have explicitly stated that limits on accessing computing power, not money or engineers, are the main brake on scaling and innovation. Chinese AI company DeepSeek relied on Nvidia A100-era capacity or rentals abroad for its flagship AI models. Domestic substitutes (e.g., Huawei Ascend) face lower memory bandwidth, weaker chip-to-chip links, and immature software, stretching training time and capping model size and reliability. At an AI conference in Beijing earlier this month, one of Alibaba’s AI leads, Lin Junyang, acknowledged that U.S. compute advantages may be “one to two orders of magnitude larger than ours.”
- U.S. orders for advanced chips should come before China. The AI OVERWATCH Act would require the Department of Commerce to certify that licenses to export advanced AI chips to U.S. adversaries will not adversely impact the availability of those chips for U.S. customers. This is critical because advanced AI computing capacity is in high demand, and U.S. firms should not have to wait in line behind customers in countries of concern.
- For decades, Congress has exercised oversight over the transfer of critical national security technologies. The AI OVERWATCH Act would apply the same oversight process used since 1976 for arms sales to export licenses for advanced AI chips. The Department of Commerce would be required to transmit proposed licenses to Congress for a 30-day review period, and Congress could block the license by enacting a joint resolution of disapproval within that window.
“America’s cutting-edge chips and advanced technology must never be used to power the AI systems that support China’s military and intelligence apparatuses, especially at the expense of American innovators. FDD Action endorses the AI OVERWATCH Act, because it gives Congress the ability to review proposed licenses to ensure chip sales protect U.S. national security while promoting innovation here at home.”
Connor Pfeiffer
Senior Director of Government Relations, FDD Action
Congressional Press Releases
Read statements from members of Congress who are supporting this legislation: