The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce that administers the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). It is the primary US authority for export controls on dual-use technology, and in the AI context it shapes which advanced computing integrated circuits, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and (briefly) AI model weights can flow to which countries and end users.
Type: Agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce Headquarters: Washington, D.C. Authority: Export Administration Regulations (EAR); Export Control Reform Act of 2018 Under Secretary (Trump II, 2025–): Jeffrey Kessler Under Secretary (Biden, 2021–2025): Alan Estevez
Mandate
BIS administers export controls on dual-use commercial items — items with both civilian and military applications — through the Commerce Control List (CCL) and the Entity List. In the AI context, BIS is the primary US agency shaping which chips, manufacturing equipment, and (briefly) model weights can flow to which countries and end users.
The agency implements decisions made at the NSC, Commerce, and State level. Questions of chip access (Nvidia, AMD), foundry access (TSMC), and data-center equipment (ASML) run through BIS licensing. BIS-administered controls interact with Defense Production Act reporting — Executive Order 14110 — Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI used DPA authority but routed compute reporting through BIS — with Treasury OFAC sanctions, which are overlapping but distinct authorities, and with allied export regimes, as Japan and the Netherlands coordinate under plurilateral understandings.
Advanced-computing export controls
The October 7, 2022 advanced computing rules were the first comprehensive US export controls targeting advanced computing ICs and semiconductor manufacturing equipment destined for China. They introduced ECCN 3A090 for advanced ICs and remain in force.
An October 17, 2023 update tightened the 2022 rules after Nvidia developed China-specific compliance SKUs (the A800 and H800). The update added performance-density metrics and restricted additional companies via the Entity List. Together, the October 2022 and October 2023 controls govern advanced-chip exports to China.
On May 31, 2026, BIS issued guidance clarifying that it was still enforcing the November 2023 license requirement for advanced semiconductors bound for China, despite the unenforced Biden-era "AI diffusion" rule change and the confusion it created among exporters about which controls remained operative. The guidance stated that the October 2022 and October 2023 advanced-computing controls, not the rescinded Diffusion Rule, govern advanced-chip exports to China (Source: insideaipolicy.com).
AI Diffusion Rule and post-rescission guidance
The Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion Interim Final Rule established a three-tier country framework, Total Processing Performance (TPP) caps, and a new ECCN 4E091 control on closed-weight AI model weights trained above 10²⁶ operations. It was signed January 13, 2025 and rescinded May 13, 2025 by Trump-era BIS before the May 15, 2025 compliance date.
After rescinding the Diffusion Rule, BIS issued three replacement documents in May 2025: an AI Model Training Policy; GP10, a guidance document warning against use of Chinese-made advanced chips such as the Huawei Ascend; and Diversion Guidance. The October 2022 and October 2023 advanced-computing rules remained in force.
The June 2026 Anthropic model controls
On June 12, 2026, the Commerce Department imposed export-control restrictions on two specific closed-weight AI models — Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5 — suspending foreign access by imposing license requirements on their export (Source: wttlonline.com) (Source: labs.cloudsecurityalliance.org).
On June 30, 2026, Commerce withdrew the restrictions. Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote that Anthropic "has taken steps in close coordination with the U.S. government to address the risks associated with Claude Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5"; the action ended license requirements for exports and in-country transfers of both models, after what the New York Times described as weeks of deliberations between the department and the company over safeguards built into the models (Source: nytimes.com) (Source: cnbc.com). Unlike the rescinded Diffusion Rule's country-tier ECCN 4E091 controls on classes of closed model weights, the June 2026 action applied export controls to named models of a single US developer.
Entity List and equipment-flow controls
BIS continues to add Chinese AI firms, semiconductor manufacturers, and cloud providers to the Entity List, the mechanism of first resort for individual-company controls.
On July 22, 2026, BIS confirmed it is formally investigating whether Chinese firms including Moonshot AI are accessing advanced U.S. AI chips, with Entity List designation a possible outcome; the confirmation followed OSTP Director Michael Kratsios's statement that Moonshot had acquired GB300-equipped servers in Thailand (Source: theinformation.com; bloomberg.com). See Chip Smuggling and Export-Control Evasion.
Alongside entity designations, BIS has applied controls at the equipment-flow level. The U.S. Commerce Department's order halting some chip-equipment shipments to Hua Hong — China's second-largest chipmaker — became public on April 28, 2026. The order narrows the channel through which mature-node fabs in China can receive Western tooling, paralleling earlier Entity List actions but applied at the equipment-flow rather than entity-designation level (Source: reuters.com).
A congressional demand that BIS clarify the status of an existing rule became public on August 11, 2026. Representative John Moolenaar (R-MI), chair of the House select committee on China, told the Commerce Department that BIS should clarify that due-diligence requirements for semiconductor producers, issued in an interim final rule in January 2025 in the closing days of the Biden administration, remain in effect. His contention is that the Trump administration's decision not to enforce controls on AI chips has left the status of the foundry rule unclear. The letter became public through Inside AI Policy, citing Inside U.S. Trade; only the article's opening was retrievable, so the letter's own date and full contents remain unverified (Source: insideaipolicy.com). See Export Controls (AI).
The same day, the Chinatalk argument that only Huawei's Ascend line (~1M chips/year) constitutes AI-relevant Chinese semiconductor output — set against Jensen Huang's claim that "China manufactures 60% of mainstream chips" — became public, reflecting a narrower view among some analysts of China's AI compute base than industry estimates suggest.
Relationships
- related: BIS Framework for AI Diffusion — Interim Final Rule (Jan 13, 2025) — rescinded AI rule
- related: Export Controls (AI), Compute Governance, US-China AI Competition: Different Races, Different Metrics, AI Diffusion
- related: Nvidia & TSMC — AI Compute Infrastructure, DeepSeek — regulated counterparties
- related: America's AI Action Plan — current guiding strategy for BIS AI policy
- related: Jake Sullivan — as NSA, co-shaped 2022/2023 controls; see Geopolitics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
- related: Fast-Follow Problem — BIS controls are a lever in slowing Chinese follow-on
Sources
- BIS Framework for AI Diffusion — IFR (2025-01-15; rescinded 2025-05-13)