The Stop Stealing Our Chips Act is a bipartisan U.S. Senate bill, sponsored by Senators Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Mark Warner (D-VA), that would establish a whistleblower-incentive program inside the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to reward individuals who report illegal exports of advanced AI semiconductors. The Senate passed the measure on May 26, 2026; House action was pending as of that date. (Source: insideaipolicy.com)
| Type | Authorization / enforcement legislation |
| Sponsors | Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) |
| Status | Passed the Senate May 26, 2026 (House action pending) |
| Mechanism | BIS whistleblower-incentive program for reporting illegal advanced-AI-chip exports |
Status and timeline
The Senate passed the bill on May 26, 2026. As of that date House action remained pending. (Source: insideaipolicy.com)
Key provisions
The bill directs BIS to create a whistleblower-incentive program that rewards individuals who report illegal exports of advanced AI semiconductors. Its stated target is the diversion of controlled chips to China through transshipment hubs, shell companies, and insider channels. The structure is modeled on the existing SEC and IRS whistleblower regimes, which crowdsource detection by offering bounties to informants. (Source: insideaipolicy.com)
The chip-smuggling page describes the binding constraint on export controls as BIS's enforcement headcount and limited visibility into diversion networks rather than the rules themselves. The whistleblower program adds a detection-and-incentive layer rather than a new control, and addresses a standing open question on that page about whether BIS receives a material enforcement-headcount expansion.
Relation to existing controls
The program would operate alongside the BIS AI Diffusion framework, EO 14320, and the SCALE Act, adding a detection-and-incentive mechanism to a regime built largely around rules. The Rounds–Warner pairing places hardware-diversion enforcement among the bipartisan areas of AI policy, in contrast to the broader regulatory agenda, where measures such as the scratched frontier-AI EO divided along deregulatory lines.
Relationships
- depends-on: Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), Export Controls (AI).
- supports: Chip Smuggling and Export-Control Evasion (enforcement-capacity response), US-China AI Competition: Different Races, Different Metrics.
- related: BIS Framework for AI Diffusion — Interim Final Rule (RESCINDED), Executive Order 14320 — Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack, SCALE Act — Rep. John Moolenaar (April 2026). (Co-sponsors: Sen. Mike Rounds, Sen. Mark Warner.)
Sources
- Inside AI Policy, May 26, 2026: "Senate approves anti-chip smuggling 'whistleblower' measure, aimed at blocking China" — (Source: insideaipolicy.com)