How good is China at export controls?

China’s export control agency has a fraction of BIS's staff, but makes up for it through politically centralized rulemaking and well-integrated…

May 24 • Maxwell K. Roberts

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How much US compute is China renting from the cloud?

China is restricted from purchasing advanced US chips, but it can rent liberally from the cloud. Even a modest share of US cloud compute could boost…

May 22 • Cassia King

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How much should we worry about secretly loyal AIs?

Defenders have structural advantages but there’s work to be done.

May 20 • Dave Banerjee

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How banned AI chips end up in China

AI chips and servers reach China through distribution chains in which each seller vets only its direct customers, and no one is on the hook for what…

May 15 • Erich Grunewald

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April 2026

Making through-silicon vias is not a bottleneck for China's HBM production

Firms like ACM Research are making the deposition machines China needs, though they may suffer from worse yields.

Apr 22 • Hamish Low

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March 2026

BIS should use AI to control AI chips

For BIS to truly stamp out smuggling, it needs to take advantage of the AI capabilities it’s trying to control.

Mar 30 • Maxwell K. Roberts

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Securing AI infrastructure to prevent backdoors and sabotage

There are many open problems in preserving the integrity of model weights, training data, and algorithms.

Mar 26 • Dave Banerjee

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A sketch of market-based export controls

Market forces could make export enforcement more adaptive, efficient, and predictable.

Mar 20 • Onni Aarne

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China is making strides in etching machines for memory

AMEC’s current etching machines can’t support China’s high-bandwidth memory efforts, but its next flagship likely can.

Mar 17 • Hamish Low

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February 2026

BIS should build a lean, mean, data-driven enforcement machine

BIS enforcement relies on decades-old software systems and fragmented, patchwork databases. Fixing that could massively improve its ability to catch…

Feb 27 • Maxwell K. Roberts

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Endgames for export controls

Export controls on AI chips could lead to enduring dominance.

Feb 18 • Onni Aarne

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Where will China get its compute in 2026?

Over half of the compute will likely be legally imported NVIDIA H200s, but other sources—domestic production, proxy fabrication, and smuggling—matter…

Feb 13 • Erich Grunewald

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