The U.S. Commerce Department said Wednesday it is imposing new export controls on biotechnology equipment and related technology because of national security concerns tied to artificial intelligence and data science.

Washington has raised concerns that China could use U.S. technology to strengthen military capabilities and help design new weapons through AI. The department said the laboratory equipment could be used for "human performance enhancement, brain-machine interfaces, biologically-inspired synthetic materials, and possibly biological weapons."

The new export controls, which restrict shipments to China and other countries without a U.S. license, are for high-parameter flow cytometers and certain mass spectrometry equipment, which Commerce said can "generate high-quality, high-content biological data, including that which is suitable for use to facilitate the development of AI and biological design tools."

This is the latest effort by Washington to restrict U.S. technology to China. On Monday, Commerce moved to further restrict AI chip and technology exports from China aimed at helping the United States maintain its dominant status in AI by controlling it around the world.

U.S. lawmakers have been considering a number of proposals to keep Americans' personal health and genetic information from foreign adversaries and aim to push U.S. pharmaceutical and biotech companies to lessen their reliance on China for everything from drug ingredient manufacturing to early research.

Last week, U.S. lawmakers called on the Commerce Department to consider restricting the export of U.S. biotechnology to the Chinese military, citing concerns Beijing could weaponize it.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington last week said Beijing "firmly opposes any country's development, possession or use of biological weapons."

In August, U.S. lawmakers called on the Food and Drug Administration to ramp up scrutiny of U.S. clinical trials conducted in China, citing the risk of intellectual property theft and the possibility of forced participation of members of China's Uyghur minority group.

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Will Biden's AI rules keep the genie in the bottle?

America and China are in "grim competition" with each other, and AI superiority is now seen as "central to both sides of the conflict"

The world's major powers are locked into an artificial intelligence arms race. But new rules announced by the White House on Monday seek to guarantee American supremacy in that race.

The Biden administration's "unprecedented new export controls" intend to keep AI technology from falling into Chinese hands, said The Washington Post. The controls restrict the sale of AI-capable chips to "most countries in the world," part of an effort to keep Beijing from repurchasing American-made chips sold to third-party countries. America "leads the world in AI now, both AI development and AI chip design," said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, "and it's critical that we keep it that way."

Biden is "rushing" to restrict AI chip exports because recent developments suggest that China is "catching up in the race" to create massively powerful AI systems, said Time. The Chinese company DeepSeek recently released an open-source AI model that "outperformed any American open-source language model." The development surprised officials "who had believed China lagged behind in terms of AI capabilities." The new rules are a "decisive move to make life much harder for China's AI ecosystem," said Greg Allen of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The 'contest for geopolitical superiority'

America and China are in "grim competition" with each other, and "both intend to be prepared for war," Ezra Klein said at The New York Times. AI superiority is now seen as "central to both sides of the conflict." DeepSeek's new model is part of a new wave of AI systems that can be built cheaply and stored on personal computers. But calls for restraint in the AI arms race will probably take second place to the "contest for geopolitical superiority," Klein said. America is the "leading power when it comes to artificial intelligence," said Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor. "And we intend to keep it that way."

To do that, the new rules "strangle competition" in the tech marketplace, Chris Stokel-Walker said at Fast Company. Banning exports to China "makes sense, given how integral AI will be to shaping our future." But blocking exports to 120 other countries is harder to justify. That seems less about protecting America and "more like an overtly protectionist trade policy." That makes it "more likely countries will look towards China" to power their own AI efforts, Stokel-Walker said.

How long will U.S. lead last?

It's not just chip exports: Biden on Tuesday signed an executive order to ensure that AI data centers and clean-power facilities that supply them energy "can be built quickly and at scale," said The Associated Press. "We will not let America be out-built" in the AI industry, Biden said.

American chipmaker Nvidia and the European Union have both "expressed their displeasure" with the new rules, said Karl Freund, founder and analyst at Cambrian-AI Research, at Forbes. The winner? Beijing. China's chips are slower "but at least you can get them." For AI developers in Africa, South America or Asia, the Biden administration rules mean Chinese technology might "become your best and perhaps only choice." The new rules will slow down China's AI development, Freund said. "But for how long?"

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Netherlands to expand export controls on semiconductor equipment

The Dutch government on Wednesday said it would expand its export controls on advanced semiconductor equipment from April 1, which chip equipment company ASML said it did not expect to impact its business.

Dutch national export licence requirements for semiconductor equipment were first introduced in 2023 under pressure from the U.S. to limit shipments to China, and they have since been expanded several times.

The latest measures will require companies to seek export licences for a "very limited" number of technologies such as measuring and inspection equipment, the Dutch trade ministry said in a statement announcing the changes.

ASML said in response it did not see them having any additional impact on the guidance the company issued in December, when the U.S. government announced new restrictions on semiconductor exports to China affecting chip equipment firms.

Details of the rule changes published in the country's state legal newspaper on Wednesday showed the licensing requirements now include technologies used to find tiny defects in wafers, and systems that improve measurements after deposition and etching - steps that are repeated frequently in the chipmaking process.

A spokesperson for the country's trade ministry said minor changes to the rules due to technical developments will happen occasionally.

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